Utah Daily Snow

Summary

Generally dry conditions for the next week or more as storms struggle to maintain strength as they push in off the Pacific. Chances for a change around Christmas.

Short Term Forecast

The ski conditions yesterday were fantastic with bluebird conditions and soft snow.  Truly an iconic Wasatch bluebird day!  But, if you read yesterday's forecast, you know that the forecast was bleak if you were hoping for more snow.  For much of the past week, we've seen the models completely abandon the idea of an active pattern impacting our area before Christmas.  But maybe, just maybe, we are turning a corner and the forecast is trending back in the right direction.... More on that in the extended forecast...

We can expect a fair weather weekend with warming in the upper elevations and mild inversions developing in the valleys.  The Pacific Northwest down the the Sierra Nevada will be active, but this energy is going to run into high pressure as it tries to move east into the Great Basin.  These storms effectively fall apart.  The strongest system may maintain enough strength to bring us a slight chance for showers on Monday and Tuesday, but that's about it over the next week.  

So generally warmer up on the hill for the next week with occasional clouds and a slight chance of snow showers on Monday and Tuesday.  No real chance for accumulating snow... 

Extended Forecast

Now the good news...  Over the past 24 hours, both the GFS and Euro have latched onto an idea of a pattern change as we head into the week of and after Christmas.  Both models have a weak storm next weekend (December 21-22), then stronger systems on around Christmas eve.  Of course, this is 10 days out and it's way too early to get excited about a Christmas Eve storm system, but the signs are encouraging.  

Here is the overall pattern, notice the high pressure (warm colors) preventing storms from entering our area early in the loop, then, we see low pressure (cool colors) take over just before and thru Christmas: 

That's the pattern change we are hoping for...  Now we keep our fingers crossed and hope we've turned the corner and will continue to trend better in subsequent model runs.  

Evan | OpenSnow

P.S.  If you are looking for more frequent updates on model trends, I highly recommend following us on Twitter (@WasatchSnow).