Our pattern change is finally here! Unfortunately, our first system paid the price for battling the ridge and has been decimated beyond recognition. What was once a strong, handsome storm with his whole life in front of him is now a shadow of a system, barely recognized by his own ensemble members -- hardly able to muster more than a few measly snowflakes. Our storm tonight is weak, friends... latest QPF numbers are only about 0.1-0.3" which would mean maybe 1-3" of snowfall tonight. Here it is in all its disappointing glory: 

If there's one area that could do a bit better today and tonight, it's up in the Bear River Range where Beaver Mountain is located. 

We then have a break Tuesday afternoon thru Wednesday before a much stronger system moves in. Yesterday, you could probably tell that my apprehension was palpable. We need this storm to come through for us and I've been afraid of it splitting and diving to our west/south. Luckily, so far, so good as model QPF and storm structure continue to look favorable for good snow. You can see this storm quickly on the heels of our initial weak system in the below animation: 

Not a bad-looking piece of energy. Snow should start Wednesday night and continue thru Thursday into Thursday night before tapering on Friday. Snow could continue in NW on Friday in favored areas, and we could even see some lake effect snow SE of the GSL as water temps are warm and this will have very cold air and unstable airmass in its wake. 

As for total QPF, the WPC still looks optimistic:

Very good amounts for all locations from the Central Wasatch through central Utah (Eagle Point) down to the Grand Staircase (Brian Head). This system looks to really kickoff true winter for many areas as we will see solid low, mid, and high elevation snowfall. If we look at 5-day QPF numbers from downscaled GEFS we can see that all Utah resorts are currently showing over an inch of liquid with up to 1.8":

That means we *should* be looking at a foot or more of snow this week for most mountain locations. While the models continue to look solid, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't still apprehensive. We are still 3 days out from the heart of this system and we've already seen one storm fall apart as we got closer. This storm could still easily do the same. I'm trying to keep expectations low for now until we are closer and more confident. 

We should see a break for the weekend and into early next week. A trough is going to dive south along the west coast which will temporarily pump a ridge up over the interior states. This trough should then slowly work its way east next week. Utah should see a chance for some precip around December 15th, although exactly when and how much is impossible to tell at this point. Overall, the general pattern thereafter continues to look good for active weather to continue right up to Christmas. Here are heights on December 20th:

A very strong signal for troughing over the western US. I would say we are highly likely to see additional storms between this weekend and the holidays with perhaps significant snowfall. I would not be surprised if we were able to climb back to an average or above average snowpack by the end of the month. 

Evan | OpenSnow