Weather
California skiing stays in spring mode through Monday, then the Sierra turns wintry from Tuesday into early Friday with a dense-to-lighter storm that should refresh open terrain while Southern California mostly misses out. The guidance is tightly clustered on the warm, dry stretch first, then broadly aligned on a cooler Sierra storm next week, with the biggest spread tied to snowfall intensity and ridge-top wind. Confidence is highest from Tuesday, March 31 through early Friday, April 3, when most open Sierra resorts should pick up fresh snow, snow levels fall from around 6,500 to 8,000 feet toward 3,500 to 5,000 feet, and Mount Baldy stays mostly dry while still temporarily closed.
From Tuesday through Monday, the individual models are strongly converged on a mostly dry and unusually warm pattern across California ski country. Tahoe and Mammoth hold mountain highs largely in the 40s and 50s with overnight lows often in the upper 30s and 40s before the cooldown arrives, so expect a classic spring cycle with limited overnight refreeze at lower bases and softer snow building quickly each afternoon. Winds increase some around Tahoe and the eastern Sierra by Wednesday and Thursday, but the timing and magnitude differences are small enough that the main message is steady: warm surfaces, no meaningful snowfall, and only brief lift-impact risk on the most exposed ridges. Southern California stays hotter and drier still, and Mount Baldy remains temporarily closed.
Late Monday into Wednesday, the models converge on the ridge breaking down and Sierra precipitation developing, but they still diverge on how quickly the main wave organizes and how hard it hits at the start. A few solutions bring light snow as early as Monday afternoon or night, while others wait until Tuesday or even Wednesday for the more meaningful push, so the cleanest signal is for conditions to turn wintry from north to south on Tuesday and then ramp up through Wednesday. Early snow looks relatively dense, with SLRs mostly in the 5-10 range around Tahoe and 8-12 around Mammoth, and snow levels generally starting near 6,500 to 8,000 feet, which favors upper-mountain accumulation first and keeps lower bases more marginal at the front edge.
Wednesday night through early Friday is the part of the forecast with the best overlap between timing confidence and ski-impact confidence, even though the individual models still diverge quite a bit on storm totals and ridge-top wind. They agree on colder air pressing in, snow levels dropping to roughly 3,500 to 5,000 feet by Thursday, and snow quality improving into the 10-14 range with a few late periods near 15, so turns should get less dense as the storm matures. The best open-resort totals are centered near 20 inches around Kirkwood, Sugar Bowl, and Palisades Tahoe, with about 10 inches at Mammoth, while exposed Sierra ridges could see anything from 40 to over 70 mph gusts depending on the solution.
Resort Forecast Totals (Tue Mar 31 – Fri Apr 03)
- Bear Valley – 13″-33″
- Kirkwood – 11″-29″
- Sugar Bowl – 11″-27″
- Dodge Ridge – 10″-26″
- Palisades Tahoe – 10″-26″
- Mammoth – 6″-15″
- Northstar – 5″-14″
- Heavenly – 4″-12″
- Diamond Peak – 3″-8″
- Mt Rose – 3″-8″
- Mount Baldy – 0″
