Jan. 12 2012   Incline Village Nevada Real Estate Weather.    

Tahoe's weather looks as if it is finally about to change.

The ridge of high pressure that's been blocking our storms since Thanksgiving is on the move. It is shifting west, and next week the ridge is expected to move toward the International Dateline. This will allow a trough to set up along the West Coast, shuttling storms into Oregon and Northern California, where moisture from the Pacific will merge with cold air sweeping down from the Arctic.

The first hint of this coming change will be the passage of a storm system to our north on Sunday and Monday. This system, like so many others this season, will largely miss Tahoe, but it will bring cooler temperatures, high winds and a chance of showers as far south as Highway 50. But no accumulations are expected.

After that we will briefly return to the mild weather we've seen for weeks. But by Wednesday a fairly significant system should be bearing down on far Northern California, with Tahoe perhaps seeing its first snow of the year by Thursday, Jan. 19.

It's too early to say how much snow we'll get, or to make any predictions about quality. Certainly if these early forecasts take shape we will be talking about at least a foot or two through that first weekend of storms. But we are not yet convinced that the jet stream is going to sag far enough south to really nail Tahoe. At least in the initial stages, we could be left with just the southern edge of a storm that lowers the boom on Oregon.

But the good news is that the pattern is definitely changing, and the long-range forecast models are showing a period of wetter than normal weather through the end of January.