Summary: 

Warm and dry thru Saturday... Next system moves in Sunday morning.  Valley rain and mountain snow likely.

Details: 

After yesterday's weak system clipped the area, we have now cleared out once again.  Yesterday we had a few early morning showers and then a couple afternoon convective storms that dropped a few minutes of heavy graupel in the high elevations along with a rumble or two of thunder.  

High pressure keeps us dry and warm thru Saturday.  Next system approaches Saturday night with winds increasing ahead of the cold front during the day on Saturday. 

The storm itself moves in on Sunday morning and will continue into Sunday night.  Neither model is overly cold, so snow levels should remain above most valleys.  However, right now temps look cold enough to bring snow to most, if not all, ski resort elevations.  This isn't a major storm but it should be bigger than most of the other one's we've seen thus far this fall.  My preliminary guess would be 1-4" below 8,000 feet with 4-8" possible above.  Depending on how the system exits the region, we could have a possibility for a bit of lake effect snow as the lake surface temp is still very warm.  

Total QPF thru the day on Monday looks like this: 

 

There are pockets of close to an inch of liquid in the Wasatch, so it's a reasonably decent storm.  We'll just have to wait and see how well it holds together.  

Long range:

Beyond about Tuesday (10/28) of next week, the models are in absolute chaos.  GFS has been consistent with a large trough entering the region while the EC forecasts ridging through Halloween then cuts off a system to our west and eventually moves it through the area during the first few days of November.  Needless to say, I am not buying any of it right now.  We'll just have to wait and hope a consensus forms over the next couple days.  

Evan | OpenSnow

P.S. Mountain bikers... Saturday might be your last chance of the season to do high elevation rides like The Crest.  At this time, it looks like Sunday's system will shut down biking for the season up there.  Even a few inches of snow will be tough to melt off this late into the Fall.