Model maps

How to read them

Colors show what is falling and how hard: green is rain, blue is snow, red is freezing rain, purple is sleet or a mix. The black lines are sea level pressure in millibars, with H and L at the highs and lows. The dashed lines are the 1000 to 500 mb thickness in decameters: blue is 540 and under, which is about where snow can reach the ground at sea level. Up in the Sierra the ground is so high that snow often falls with thickness well above that, around 546 to 552.

Where the numbers come from

The European model (ECMWF IFS), the European AI model (ECMWF AIFS), the American model (GFS), the GFS ensemble mean and NOAA's long range CFS, straight from the free NOAA and ECMWF files as each run comes out. ECMWF data is used under CC BY 4.0. Past about a week, the models move around from run to run, and past two weeks the CFS is one run of one model, a hint at the pattern and nothing more, so treat those maps as where storms could go, not where they will. For storm totals see the 15 day precipitation maps, and the Kerr Map has the hour by hour future radar.