California skiing stays in spring mode through Monday, then the Sierra turns wintry from Tuesday into early Friday with a dense-to-lighter storm that should refresh open terrain while Southern California mostly misses out. The guidance is tightly clustered on the warm, dry stretch first, then broadly aligned on a cooler Sierra storm next week, with the biggest spread tied to snowfall intensity and ridge-top wind. Confidence is highest from Tuesday, March 31 through early Friday, April 3, when most open Sierra resorts should pick up fresh snow, snow levels fall from around 6,500 to 8,000 feet toward 3,500 to 5,000 feet, and Mount Baldy stays mostly dry while still temporarily closed.
From Tuesday through Monday, the individual models are strongly converged on a mostly dry and unusually warm pattern across California ski country. Tahoe and Mammoth hold mountain highs largely in the 40s and 50s with overnight lows often in the upper 30s and 40s before the cooldown arrives, so expect a classic spring cycle with limited overnight refreeze at lower bases and softer snow building quickly each afternoon. Winds increase some around Tahoe and the eastern Sierra by Wednesday and Thursday, but the timing and magnitude differences are small enough that the main message is steady: warm surfaces, no meaningful snowfall, and only brief lift-impact risk on the most exposed ridges. Southern California stays hotter and drier still, and Mount Baldy remains temporarily closed.
Late Monday into Wednesday, the models converge on the ridge breaking down and Sierra precipitation developing, but they still diverge on how quickly the main wave organizes and how hard it hits at the start. A few solutions bring light snow as early as Monday afternoon or night, while others wait until Tuesday or even Wednesday for the more meaningful push, so the cleanest signal is for conditions to turn wintry from north to south on Tuesday and then ramp up through Wednesday. Early snow looks relatively dense, with SLRs mostly in the 5-10 range around Tahoe and 8-12 around Mammoth, and snow levels generally starting near 6,500 to 8,000 feet, which favors upper-mountain accumulation first and keeps lower bases more marginal at the front edge…