Cold Weather Is Back in the Bay Area and Tahoe. Here’s What the Storms Could Bring

The early-season summer-time temperatures that baked the Bay Area and rapidly melted the Sierra Nevada snowpack are coming to an end this week — but only for a couple of days.

National Weather Service forecasters said two back-to-back storms this week will wet the state and push out the ridge of high pressure that created the recent heat wave.

That period broke the all-time March high-temperature records at every major Bay Area climate station, and saw Lake Tahoe also get its warmest March day on record.

“It’s not like we barely beat the records, either — we really shattered the records,” said Dylan Flynn, a meteorologist with the weather service’s Bay Area office.

This two-week run of warm temperatures caused Bay Area residents to flock to local beaches or travel to the Sierra for the chance to ski in shorts. However, the exceptionally hot and dry March spelled the end of the ski season for many Tahoe resorts, which have since closed.

But for the resorts that remain open, it ain’t over yet. With rain and snow in the forecast this week, incoming cooler weather could give diehard skiers one last chance to hit fresh powder this spring.

“You can never count on winter to be done in the High Sierra,” said Carly Mangan, spokesperson for Vail Resorts in Tahoe.

Keep reading for what we know about this week’s weather change, and what anyone contemplating heading to the Sierra for one last ride should know.

What’s the weather forecast for the Bay Area this week?

Flynn said the Bay Area cooldown will begin Monday, with a first storm from the tropics that could bring a chance of “novelty drops” of rain across the region through Tuesday.

But the second storm, a cold system dipping down from the Pacific Northwest on Wednesday and Thursday, is the region’s “best chance for rain,” Flynn said.

As much as a quarter inch of rain could fall across the Bay Area, which Flynn said is important owing to the fact that it’s been “one of the driest Marches on record, too.”

“In fact, in San Francisco, it’s the driest March in over 100 years,” he noted.

Flynn said most of the rain will be “focused south of the Golden Gate Bridge” across the Peninsula, the East Bay and the Central Coast. Read the full forecast from the NWS’s Bay Area office. 

After this week’s rain, what can we expect in the Bay for early April?

The cooldown is only temporary, Flynn said. This weekend, as a new ridge of high pressure builds over the region, temperatures will spike back into the 80s in inland areas and into the 70s along the coast.

“Unfortunately, after the next three days, the sun comes back out, and it gets hot again,” Flynn said.

Flynn expects temperatures to continue to be warm into early next week, but said “there’s a lot of uncertainty” over what the weather will be like after Monday.

“What I can say is after this cool stretch, we go right back above normal temperatures,” Flynn said.

What kind of snow will Tahoe see this week?

By the end of Thursday, this week’s storms could drop as much as a foot or more of snow on the height of the Sierra Nevada, said Gigi Giralte, a meteorologist with the NWS’s Reno office.

The new snow is a big deal for the state’s dwindling snowpack, which as of Monday sat at a meager 18% of the April 1 average. But Giralte warned that the snow may have trouble sticking to the ground because of the recent warmth and lack of snow.

After the storms end, Giralte expects the snowpack to “be about the same, because we’re not getting feet and feet of snow” this week.

“We would need a much more significant storm to greatly impact the snowpack that we currently have,” she said.

Since temperatures are forecast to warm up after Thursday into the low 60s in the Tahoe area, Giralte said anyone heading up to the area should still “definitely expect spring skiing” conditions.

People traveling to the region can expect minor snow impacts, “but it’s still going to be a switch-up from the warm and dry weather we’ve been experiencing for most of March,” said Kate Forrest, a meteorologist with the weather service’s Sacramento office.

What do Tahoe ski resorts expect, and is it worth it to go up from the Bay this weekend?

For many Tahoe resorts whose lifts have already stopped spinning for the season, this storm is too little, too late.

But some Tahoe ski areas are still open — and are embracing this April storm.

That includes the three Vail-owned resorts in Tahoe: Kirkwood, Heavenly and Northstar. Spokesperson Mangan said they’re hoping for significant snowfall this week — up to 18 inches according to Monday’s projections — especially at Kirkwood.

“Kirkwood does kind of seem like right now in the eye of the storm,” Mangan said on Monday.

Palisades Tahoe’s Olympic Valley side is also still open. OpenSnow forecaster Bryan Allegretto wrote on the Palisades Tahoe blog that the resort is expecting snow to start early Tuesday morning and to last through Thursday. But he said it’s still unclear whether the heaviest snowfall will head north or south.

At present, Allegretto predicts high temperatures in the 30s up on the mountain, with ridgetop winds up to 50 miles per hour to start — increasing to up to 100 miles per hour overnight on Wednesday, which could affect lift operations on Wednesday or Thursday. Allegretto expects up to 16 inches of snow at the Palisades’ highest elevations.

Perhaps more importantly, Mangan said, are the cold temperatures the region is expecting overnight this week, which could not only help slow snowmelt and assist resort operations in grooming more terrain, but also produce loose, soft “corn” snow, which is a springtime Tahoe staple.

“Any of that is just going to help immensely at this time in the season for us to get through to our closing days,” she said. “We’ll take anything we can get.”

While Northstar is slated to close after Sunday, Heavenly and Kirkwood are aiming for an April 19 closing date, Mangan said. And while she doesn’t expect this storm to open a bunch of new terrain in the mountains, this week’s storm could help keep the season alive until then, she said.

What should skiers and snowboarders know about conditions right now?

The sun may return this weekend, Allegretto said, bringing highs in the 60s at the village in Olympic Valley and in the 40s up top at Palisades.

But “given that we are seeing low coverage across different areas on all of our resorts in the Tahoe region,” Mangan warned that anyone skiing this weekend should “be aware of the potential for unmarked hazards hidden just below the snow,” concealed by the injection of fresh powder. She advised skiing with caution and within one’s ability level.

While Heavenly and Northstar’s lower mountains are closed, they benefit from gondolas to bring skiers to the upper mountains, terrain which Mangan said is “ holding up really well.”

Kirkwood, meanwhile, has a higher base level, so it’s still open from top to bottom with 60% of terrain open — but nonetheless, “it’s melting out fast,” Mangan said.

So if you want to get “that one last hurrah” for the season, you may be able to get it this weekend, she said.

“Everybody loves a little April powder,” Mangan said.

Beyond this week, is there any more snow in the long-range forecast?

The simple answer is not really, Giralte said — but it has “snowed in May before, so it’s not out of the question.”

The Climate Prediction Center’s 8-to-14-day outlook shows California and most of Nevada will likely experience above-normal temperatures and below-average precipitation for around the first two weeks of April.

“In the long range, we don’t really see some snow coming as high pressure sets back and lingers,” Giralte said, “which will help bring those temperatures back up and dry us out again, like we saw last week.”