Valley rain, wind and high elevation snow possible later this week
A rather significant atmospheric river is forecast to make landfall and impact northern California and far western Nevada Thursday through Sunday, according to the National Weather Service in Reno.
While there are many details to be ironed out, it appears now that significant rains are likely in northeast California, the far northern Sierra, and far northwest Nevada. Further south, near Lake Tahoe and I-80 and into Mono County, there is much less confidence in precipitation amounts due to varying simulations of this series of storms.
Even subtle fluctuations in storm track could result in big increases/decreases in how much rain or snow these areas get. Snow levels are likely to be high, 8000-plus feet, for most of the storm which will result in minimal benefit to the snowpack but only intermittent travel impacts to the Sierra pass roads.
In western Nevada, periodic showers are likely as well as strong gusty winds especially on Thursday and Friday. An atmospheric river are long bands of moisture from the tropical Pacific Ocean that can bring significant portions of our wintertime precipitation. These are sometimes also called pineapple express storms.