Round two is coming into California now with cooler conditions which means snow levels will be below pass level.
Wind gusts could be as high as 150mph in the high Sierras, just shy of the 175mph wind gusts recorded at Squaw Valley (Lake Tahoe) in the weekend storm.
An additional 4-8" of rain is expected in lower elevations of central and northern California with 4-8 FEET of snow in the mountains.
This will cause further major flooding in the lower elevations of the mountains with flooding likely in the lower elevations as well.
So far this year (2017), San Francisco has received more rain than in all of 2013.
The weekend storm has moved on and is causing major headaches all across the western and central U.S. Several road closures due to a quick morning rain that froze to the ground followed by snow and blowing snow in Minnesota are reported after a pile-up in Cloquet (near Duluth) and spinouts on highways north and west of the Twin Cities.
This next storm coming into the west right now could create an ice storm across the central plains and into the midwest.
Also of note, but unrelated: We are likely already in solar minimum again. So far, 9 of 10 days in 2017 have been spotless on the sun.
Eastern and southeastern Europe have been experiencing nasty winter conditions. The islands of Greece have been covered in snow... sometimes measured in meters. Temperatures have fallen below 0F in parts of northern Greece. 10 people froze to death in Poland with more deaths across the region.
Temperatures in a remote village of Siberia plummeted to -80F in what has been a brutal winter in much of Russia... Moscow experienced its coldest Orthodox Christmas Eve on record at -24F.
Yeah, it's much colder and more snow-intense here than the last years.
But the last years were pretty terrible anyway, too warm/wet and snow-cover well below average.
This year is just a return back to normal (and not even that): 20-40 years ago, Lake Zell am See would be frozen and people could go ice-skating on the lake. Nowadays, only small parts of the lake are frozen and it's too dangerous to go onto it.
20-40 years ago, we'd have -20°C for one or two weeks. Now people already complain if there's -20°C for one or two days !
Anyway, we are getting another 1-2 feet of snow this weekend ...
