Mt. Whitney Portal Store & Hostel Forums General Mt. Whitney Portal Store Message Board Weather!

The weather on the webcam and on the radar looks sick. Dark clouds and rain. Take it easy on the mountain, saturday, we don't want any mishaps. Looking at the forcast it shows that their will be isolated T-storms on 8/2, but on sunday it should be sunny, but then isolated T-storms the next two days and after that it will be clear for the rest of the week.
Good Luck.
Matt in socal

I like Matt's forecast better than the NWS:
HAZARDOUS WEATHER OUTLOOK
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LAS VEGAS NV
500 AM PDT SAT AUG 2 2003

THIS HAZARDOUS WEATHER OUTLOOK IS FOR SOUTHEAST CALIFORNIA/SOUTHERN
NEVADA/NORTHWEST ARIZONA

.DAY ONE...TODAY.

A MOIST AND UNSTABLE AIRMASS REMAINS IN PLACE LEADING TO ISOLATED TO
SCATTERED THUNDERSTORM ACTIVITY THIS AFTERNOON. SOME OF THE STRONGER
STORMS THAT DEVELOP WILL BE CAPABLE OF PRODUCING HEAVY RAINFALL IN A
SHORT PERIOD OF TIME.

.DAYS TWO THROUGH SEVEN...SUNDAY THROUGH FRIDAY.

THE PROBABILITY FOR WIDESPREAD HAZARDOUS WEATHER IS LOW. THUNDERSTORM
ACTIVITY IS STILL EXPECTED SUNDAY BUT WILL DECREASE IN COVERAGE AS A
DRIER AIRMASS MOVES INTO THE AREA. LITTLE TO NO THUNDERSTORM
ACTIVITY EXPECTED MONDAY THROUGH MID WEEK.

I'm leaving SD for Lone Pine this morning with intentions of day-hiking on Sunday, so I've been interested to see previous posts of hiking in the rain. I'll let you know. Looks like the mid-week hikers have the good weather this week!

That is good to hear for me... I'm planning a summit attempt on Wednesday morning and I hope for clear weather even though my party is equipped with appropriate clothing.

Hope to see some of you up there!

Chris

I go by the forcast on weather.com for lone pine. Just punch in lone pine under the search and you will have everything you need for the weather in lone pine. Even though it is lone pine, you can still say that if their is isolated T-storms in lone pine they orriginated over Whitney, so that's a good idication of what the weather forcast will be. I am moving to flagstaff for the next four years for college and so I should learn alot about mountain thunderstorms during the summer, because it can happen almost everyday their.

Flagstaff isn't too far away from Sedona. This is one of my favorite places in the U.S.. The rock formations are so unique and the mountain climbing and hiking that can take place here is amazing.

Good luck on your move!

Chris

As San Diego Eric posted, it is forecast to be a dry week in the Sierra Nevada. One of the best ways to "see" a dry atmosphere is to look at a water-vapor image. A good site is www.rap.ucar.edu/weather/satellite, then click in the Water Vapor and loop (small) circles, then Contiguous U.S. Notice the red color coming into southern CA. This means that there is very little water vapor in the middle levels of the atmosphere. For the past two weeks there has been a lot of water vapor in the middle levels of the atmosphere. This water vapor contributed to the thunderstorms.

Notice the direction that the red color is moving, from the SW. A SW air flow over California in the summer is a dry flow.

To reply to XC-runner, I would trust the National Weather Service forecast from Las Vegas anytime over the forecast from weather.com (The Weather Channel) for Lone Pine. The reason is that all The Weather Channel's forecasts are done in Atlanta. The NWS in Las Vegas is a lot closer to Lone Pine, and I would bet the forecasters there know the area better. Even better then the NWS forecast for Lone Pine/Inyo County is the NWS Fire Weather forecast for the southern Sierra Nevada, http://fire.boi.noaa.gov/FIREWX/RNOFWFVEF.html. This site has been mentioned before.

Shawn Trueman
Meteorologist
Athens, OH

Shawn - Thanks for these weather links. They are new to me. I'm glad to see a replacement for the old fire weather link "http://www.boi.noaa.gov/FIREWX/LAXFWFLaX.html" which does not work any more