Utah Daily Snow

Summary

An active weather pattern will develop to our north and west. Utah will see occasional scraps with chances for light mountain snow over the next week, but significant accumulation is unlikely. A pattern change around Christmas is possible and we could see snow return to the region.

Short Term Forecast

It's Saturday morning and we had a mostly dry cold front pass thru last night as a weak system clipped the region.  It wasn't much of a "storm", but the winds sure did howl at my place late last night.  There may have been a few snowflakes flying up high, but it didn't amount to anything as no resorts are reporting new snow.  

As discussed over the previous couple days, the pattern for the next week or so will feature active Wx for the Pacific Northwest and the Sierra Nevada but the storms will encounter high pressure as they move east and either weaken or be forced north of Utah.  There has been a bit of a trend over the past 24 hours of maybe some energy holding together a bit better. 

The first wave will push into Utah late Monday into Monday night.  This is falling apart, but right now it looks like it may hold together enough for us to get a period of mountain snow.  Still, probably only 1-3" at best for mountains of Northern Utah.  There are a couple other waves of energy that could bring slight chances for showers later in the week, perhaps Wednesday and again next weekend.  

The GFS is the more optimistic model, and even it is showing only meager amounts: 

While our chances for decent snow over the next week is slim, these weak systems may at least keep inversions from becoming strong -- which is at least a positive.  

Extended Forecast

I'm continuing to monitor a potential pattern change.  The latest GFS has our first decent system pushing in on the 23rd.  The Euro holds off until the 25th or 26th.  Generally I find these pattern changes take longer to occur than models originally forecast as continental ridges tend to be quite stubborn.  We are just now starting to enter the 10-day range of the models, so hopefully we will develop a clearer picture of when we could see storms return.  

After Christmas, the long-range pattern continues to look favorable for cold systems to drop down into the Western U.S.

The week between Christmas and New Year's Day has been fruitful for us in recent years... Hopefully we will see that again.  

Evan | OpenSnow