Utah Daily Snow

Heads up, there may be fresher snow! Read the latest Utah Daily Snow

By Evan Thayer, Forecaster Posted 5 years ago November 9, 2018

Perspective

Summary

Generally dry and cool conditions continue. We are still hoping for a pattern change for the last 10 days of November.

Short Term Forecast

Dry conditions continue for the rest of this week into next week.  A brush-by system will usher in even colder air on Sunday.  

The bad news....  At this point there does not appear to be any real chances of snow for at least 9 days. 

The good news... Cool temps will allow local resorts with snow-making capabilities to blow snow for much of this period.  There appears to be a pattern shift happening just prior to Thanksgiving.  Hopefully this will bring snow.  

The really bad news.... All this dry weather has been even warmer and dryer to our south and west.  For the most part, California did not have the benefit of the rains we saw in Utah in October.  Fire danger has been high for awhile -- add in high winds and extremely low humidity and now we have the recipe for catastrophic fires.  Yesterday, the Camp Fire near Chico in NoCal and the Woolsey and Hill fires in Ventura County erupted -- growing by more than 20,000 acres each in one day.  The entire town of Paradise, CA seems to have been destroyed with 1,000 or more structures destroyed.  The photos and the videos on Twitter and in the news are heartbreaking.  A sobering reminder that a little lack of snow right now in Utah is nothing compared to some of the other impacts of this weather pattern.  

Here are some photos from Paradise: 

Photo by @KarlMondon

Photo above by @KarlMondon

Satellite view: 

The top photo was taken at 2pm.  Other videos taken around noon show pitch blackness as residence desperately try to escape the area.  This fire started yesterday morning and was 18,000 acres by about 1pm.  Incredible rate of spread (ROS) for this fire.  

Keep California in your thoughts and prayers today... and remember, it could be worse for us.  

Extended Forecast

Looking in the extended, we do have a little bit of good news.  For the first time in awhile, we can actually see a storm in the GFS 10-day outlook.  Granted, it's weak and right now is in the last day of the run.  Here is the precip expected thru November 17: 

Totally dry in Utah.  But, if we extend this out one more day to the end of the run (thru November 18), we can see that a weak storm could bring some precip to the region...

This is good news!  A pattern this stubborn is not going to change overnight.  The most likely scenario is we see a couple weak systems at first.  The hope is that these would get stronger and by the last week of November, we can get some more significant snowfall into the area.  We will keep an eye on this.  

Evan | OpenSnow

About Our Forecaster

Evan Thayer

Forecaster

To Evan, 'The Greatest Snow on Earth' is more than just a motto - it’s a way of life. In 2010, he started Wasatch Snow Forecast as a way to share the best powder days with his fellow snow-lovers. Evan brings the same quality forecasts and weather discussions to OpenSnow and hopes you enjoy skiing/riding Utah as much as he does.

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