no snow

Man, it's like August out here. The past weekend has been sunny and about 70 here in SF. Where be the cold and the rain? Or more importantly to my friends who strap boards to their feet and pay a fortune to careen down steep hills, where the freak is the snow?

Via the SFist, Unofficial Networks asked a National Weather Service meteorologist to explain WTS (where the snow?):

Last year was a strong La Niña with the stationary high pressure further south and west of the coast allowing the jet stream and associated storm track to drop out of the Gulf of Alaska and bring copious amounts of precipitation to the Sierra. This season the La Niña signal is weaker with a high pressure ridge over the west coast allowing very little precipitation to make it to the Sierra. It is important to understand that La Niña can either be wet or dry and rarely brings average precipitation to the Sierra. There are other oscillations that couple with La Niña and have an impact on whether we end up with above or below average precipitation.

... It is very unlikely to stay this dry for the rest of the winter, but how wet it will get is extremely difficult to predict. La Niña is forecast to weaken and become more neutral into spring. Once we get the ridge of high pressure to break down or shift, we should expect more typical winter storms for the rest of the winter.

Bring on the gravel angels.