Utah Daily Snow

Short Term Forecast

We added anywhere from 1 to 10" of additional accumulation since yesterday. The best snow, as expected, stalled north of SLC yesterday. Powder Mountain picked up an additional 10" and Snowbasin another 5". Yesterday's snow was exactly what we needed. It had a nice "body" to it, and there was very little wind, so it settled in nicely into every nook and cranny. Perfect for building a base. As I mentioned the other day, it was the first good snow in quite some time on a Saturday. Not a surprise that there were crowds. Because of that fact, I kept my expectations low. My goal was just to get a few good runs in to ease the stress of the past week. Mission accomplished! 

Today, we should see lingering snow showers. There's actually a wave of energy that's rippling through Northern Utah today that could fire up periods of snow late morning and this afternoon. I don't expect more than a dusting, but ya never know... 

Attention turns to the next storm which will push through the desert southwest Monday and Tuesday. This will be a mostly Arizona event, but far southern Utah could see 5-10" of high elevation snow Monday thru Tuesday. A few showers will work their way into Northern Utah, but accumulations should be a couple inches or less. Here is the total NAM-forecasted snowfall thru Tuesday: 

Arizona Snow Bowl in Flagstaff is the place to be for this storm! 

Later this week, a strong atmospheric river (AR) event is forecasted to develop in California. A long fetch of moisture, accompanied by cold air, will take aim at the Sierra Nevada. Huge snowfall totals are likely for those mountains. However, the digging nature of this system off the west coast is going to make it somewhat difficult for that moisture to make it this far inland.

We can see how this trough evolves from Wednesday thru the weekend in the below animation of the latest Euro model:

It's hard to tell, but the date is in the top-right corner. Notice that we get a bit of scrap moisture in Northern Utah on Thursday and Friday, but the main trough doesn't move through until the weekend, and by that time it's somewhat disorganized. I expect us to see snowfall next weekend, but the amounts are very much in doubt. We should have chances for powder however, so we'll be watching that this week.

Extended Forecast

We start the extended period around Feb 1, we should have a short break after the weekend system. Then all models have another AR-type storm impacting the west. This one looks a bit more likely to maintain strength and be a bit more progressive and move inland. It's a storm that looks like it has potential, but is still 8-10 days out, so confidence is low. 

After that, the general model trend has been to build a ridge off the west coast. If this ridge stays far enough west, we could get cold storms dropping down into the area out of the N or NW. However, if it's too close to the coast, it could cut us off for awhile. All very speculative at this point... No matter what, we have chances for snow over the next 10 days and let's cross our fingers that we get as much as possible. Our snowpack numbers are much better than they were two days ago, but they are still nowhere close to good. 

Evan | OpenSnow