As we would expect in a La Nina year the Pacific Northwest is getting the brunt of the snowfall. Over the Past 2 weeks the resorts have picked up over 100 inches giving them the largest bases in the lower 48 at over 100 inches. The only places doing better are in B.C. and Alaska which which will also continued to get pounded this week and look like this shot that Miles posted from B.C.
There is a break in the action Friday and Saturday before the next storm begins to push into the Pacific NW on Sunday. This storm looks fairly cold so it should be all snow for the mountains. Looking at the total precip forecast it looks like around 2-3 feet could accumulate from Mt. Baker down to Mt. Hood, and 1-2 feet for Mt. Bachelor.
The snow will then spread East Monday and Tuesday bringing1-2 feet to Northern Idaho and then into Wyoming where Jackson could pick up 3-6+ inches.
Then the next storm begins to push into the Pacific NW on Tuesday with a couple of waves coming onshores. The snow should taper off by Thursday. These are much weaker systems bringing 6-12 inches per day to the Cascades. Mt. Baker could pick up another 1-2 feet by Thursday bringing the 4 day totals up into the 3-4 foot range. Here is the total precip forecast from the GFS forecast model today. You can see the solid 2-4 inches of liquid that would roughly translate to the 2-4 feet of snow. Further East into Idaho and Wyoming you can see that up to a foot in total is possible from Sun Valley over to Jackson.
The mountains to the North up through British Columbia will pick up even more snow than that, some areas triple the snow. Here is the 7 day snowfall chart showing the areas that will be picking up snow this week. The areas in pink will pick up more than a foot and the areas in tan will pick up more than 4 feet.
Hopefully for next weeks’ Powder Alert we will be including areas further South. BA