Heavy Snow — Upper San Joaquin River, California

2024-03-01 to 2024-03-03 · Upper San Joaquin River, California

Event narrative

The Kaiser Point SNOTEL (9131 feet) picked up an estimated 18 inches of new snowfall.

Wider weather episode

A large cold upper trough dropped out of the Gulf of Alaska on February 29 and had deepened off the Pacific Northwest coast on March 1 spreading widespread precipitation as far south a central California. The trough then slowly moved east across the Pacific Northwest on March 2 and 3 before moving east of the region on March 4. This system brought moderate to heavy precipitation to the Sierra Nevada which picked up between 2 and 4 inches of liquid precipitation north of Kings Canyon and 1 to 2 inches further south. The precipitation fell as snow above 5000 feet for the duration of the event and produced 2 to 4 feet on new snowfall north of Kings Canyon and 1.5 to 3 feet of snow further south. This system also produced a half inch to an inch of rainfall in Merced County and a quarter to half inch across most of the remainder of the San Joaquin Valley. Most of the Kern County Mountains and Deserts picked up 1 to 2 tenths of an inch of rainfall. In addition to the precipitation, strong winds also accompanied this system and combined with the snow to produce near blizzard conditions over the Sierra Nevada north of Kings Canyon between the morning of March 1 and the morning of March 3. Scattered thunderstorms also broke out during the afternoons of March 1 and March 2 over parts of the San Joaquin Valley. While the thunderstorms were not heavy rain producers, several funnel clouds were observed and one cell produced a weak tornado in northeast Madera during the afternoon of March 1. In addition to the precipitation, several stations in the Kern County Mountains and Deserts measured wind gusts exceeding 45 mph between the evening of March 2 and the early morning of March 4.

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 1154832. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.