Mostly sunny this morning, as long as you are above the valley inversion and fog layer.  A look right now at Snowbird shows a spectacular scene: 

You can see the sea of fog down in the valley.  But beautiful, clear and relatively warm up on the peaks.  It will be a good day to head up to the mountains for a dose of vitamin D. 

Things will start to change this weekend.  The blocking pattern will be breaking down and we will see a series of storms push into the pacific coast.  The first push of moisture will come on Tuesday into Tuesday night.  Generally light mountain snowfall will be likely Tuesday night and Wednesday.  This wave will precede a stronger wave for Thursday. 

On Wednesday night into Thursday, a stronger push of moisture arrives via a SW flow. This will provide additional snowfall in the high elevations.  Thursday night into Friday, the trough itself moves through and the flow switches to the WNW.  Additional heavy snow is possible Thursday night into Friday.  

Overall, the GFS is aggressive with snowfall totals thru the end of the day on Friday: 

Good news! However, there are still some uncertainties, which is to be expected considering we are 5-6 days out from the main event.  Firstly, snow levels are still a question.  I do not expect snow levels to be an "issue" as they should remain well below the base elevations of Utah ski areas. However, exactly what the temps wind up being is critical in determine snow ratios and amounts.  Also, while the operational models have been fairly consistent, their ensembles still show a wide variety of potential outcomes.  For example, check out the GFS ensembles: 

It is showing a huge range of values between now and Friday evening.  Literally a range from 0.3" of liquid to 3.5" of liquid.  Generally speaking, we find a middle ground in this range, but the fact that the range exists engenders some uncertainty in my forecast. 

I'd expect this range to narrow down in the coming days.  Right now we are in the predatory stage of forecasting in which the storm is identified, we've circled the days in our calendar, now we are just watching and waiting for the perfect time to strike. 

We should clear out be next Saturday (Jan 19th). The GFS has another system for January 20-21. The Euro has backed off on this idea somewhat.  In general, the long-range favors ridging in the western US and a deep, cold trough over the eastern half of North America after January 20th.  So we may see another break in the action. 

Evan | OpenSnow