Utah Daily Snow
By Evan Thayer, Forecaster Posted 7 years ago February 22, 2017
Welcome Back to Winter
Summary
A cold storm is bringing snow to the region thru Thursday night. Accumulations have already been impressive with more to come. A break for much of the weekend before another storm pushes in for early next week.
Short Term Forecast
Our cold front pushed into the region last night as expected. It moved slower than anticipated, which helped to keep the heavy snow going for longer and therefore we saw more snow than anticipated. It looks like 7-10" of snow for resorts north of I-80 with 13-15" for the Cottonwoods and PC ridge. You can see the NAM's forecast from yesterday compared to what we actually saw:
We are well on our way to meeting the high end of forecast totals, if not exceeding them handsomely.
Today, the initial front has dropped into Central Utah and weakened. That means snow has tapered for most resorts already. We should have a break with just occasional snow showers today before the trough itself pushes in later today into tonight and Thursday. We should see additional accumulations thru Thursday night, with the highest totals in areas favored by NW flow such as LCC. An additional 8-16" is likely by Friday morning with up to 2 feet for LCC if orographics come together just right. Today, tomorrow, and Friday should all be awesome powder days!
We'll have a bit of a break in the action late Friday thru early Sunday before the next storm arrives Sunday night thru Tuesday. This system looks like it could be another good one with abundant moisture while still maintaining colder air. You can see the upward trend early next week in QPF:
We could have several good powder days early to mid next week as well. Closing out February in style...
Extended Forecast
Latest trend in models has been to build a ridge closer to the coast. This could effectively block most storms from reaching us. We could have a mostly dry start to March if this trend proves accurate.
Evan | OpenSnow