An inside slider will bring mountain snow, scattered showers, and gusty wind conditions starting today and going into the weekend. Some of you will not see a drop at all so pay close attention to the details within this article as the arctic air heads on. Read on …
Showers are moving across San Luis Obispo County as we speak and these will increase through the evening. Lets start off with the mountain forecasts. We have opened the micro-climate alerts issued through this weekend for free. You can view them even if not a member. I’ll place links to the alerts as we move on.
Snow Advisory Alert Link –
The snowfall will start around 5pm-7pm this evening as the first round comes in. Snow level across the Kern / Ventura / Santa Barbara Mountains will be 4,000 FT and dropping through the night. All pass levels through the Kern County Mountains will be affected with this. Moderate snowfall is likely for the PMC/Gorman regions … with 1-3″ likely in PMC by Christmas afternoon .. leaning toward the 2-3″ mark.
Tehachapi however will see a round of heavier snowfall tonight due to the stronger west to east wind flow against the slopes there … so higher snowfall ‘rate of fall’ in Tehachapi than PMC. Our snowfall model does reflect moderate, but it will be heavy for Tehachapi. On and off light snowfall likely through Christmas on both ranges.
A secondary impulse may increase the snowfall rates yet again Christmas Evening into the night for the Gorman Pass and PMC forecast zones. If traveling the Grapevine … suggestion is not doing so as it will be dangerous Christmas Evening.
The snowfall charts show 7-8″ for PMC from today through Saturday morning … however that is for Mt. Pinos … I’ll give a healthy 3-5″ for the PMC region with dangerous road conditions. Use the snowfall charts below for your area.
Saturday does not look like it’ll get above freezing … or it’ll be a close call … which means all that snow will make for icy conditions … with better conditions on Sunday as ‘slightly’ warmer air comes in.
Very windy conditions will follow this storm this weekend …
Winter Weather Advisory Link –
While the Kern Mountains will win again in the snowfall amounts across the region, the LA/SBD/RIV mountains will get a bit of snowfall as well through the night.
It will be a White Christmas for some of you so lets begin.
The actual system is very dry and the angle is terrible for snowfall in the Wrightwood zones. At most it’ll be overnight and at most it’ll be a dusting.
1-2″ possible for the San Bernardino Mountains and a dusting to an inch for the Riverside Mountains.
A second impulse could bring a bit of light snowfall on Christmas Evening for the Riverside Mountains … otherwise the event will be a gentle type snowfall through tonight.
Use the snowfall charts below.
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For the rest of the area, the following is our precipitation model, showing a miss in many metro areas of OC/LA/VT once again. This type of flow pattern favors areas closer to the foothills of the Kern, San Bernardino, Riverside, and San Diego County Mountains. This is one of the driest inside sliders for the metros. You just won’t see much … only isolated passing showers and it’s over with this evening, hanging onto SD a bit longer.
Now on Saturday the winds increase really strongly out of the north and northeast. Santa Ana Wind favored locations will be getting very strong wind gusts. These will be addressed further on Christmas with an alert … and this should go into Saturday night as well …
COLD AIR – Very cold air will settle in with Teens in the high desert, single digits in the upper mountains, 30s in the metros, and 20s down the Kern/SLO Valley areas … Arctic blast is heading in behind the system so stay tuned for our cold alerts such as freeze warning and hard freeze watches …
Here is Saturday night’s projection for lows … keep in mind they may be up to 5F colder than this shows in some spots …
