Another day today that feels like somebody when Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V from yesterday's weather. Sunny in the mountains with cool, gunky inversions in the valleys. The good news is that we do have a storm that will impact the state of Utah on Thursday night into Friday. This storm, while not strong, should have enough energy to bring at least a light refresh of snow to the mountains. More importantly, it should clear out the inversions, at least temporarily, for this weekend. I'm more than ready for some air that you're not able to chew. 

Two more days of the same weather before this system pushes in Thursday night. Snow should begin in Northern Utah mountains overnight into Friday morning and continue through at least midday on Friday. Models continue to show this storm as mostly modest with only light QPF. Here is the latest WPC blend:

The areas of blue in the Wasatch are a few select areas that could see close to 0.5" of liquid while most of the mountains are in the 0.2-0.4" range. This should equate to 2-6" of snow for most mountains. For some that will just be dust on crust, while for others it could be enough for a "mini" powder day on Friday. Latest model trends do show the system digging a bit farther south so Eagle Point and Brian Head could get some accumulation as well. 

Probably the best benefit for most Utahns will be the clearer air that will come with this system. Inversions have been getting more and more polluted in recent days and this system should easily be strong enough to clear out the valleys as we head into the weekend. Unfortunately, high pressure will return by next week so it is likely inversions will return to some degree. 

While this week's system is a nice "snack" for us, what we really need is a powder feast with serving after serving of deep snow. The good news is that we continue to show a strong signal in the long-range for a pattern change at the end of the month. The bad news is that we are still 11 to 12 days from when this may even start to occur, so it's still somewhat speculative. If we look at the EPS ensemble members, we can see that after this Friday's weak storm, we have another long void with little to no chance of storms.

Finally, most ensembles show active weather returning at the very end of January or first day or two of February. What we need to see over the next week is that area of active weather work its way left in this chart. Once it's within 7 or 8 days, we will gain considerable confidence in this change. 

Evan | OpenSnow

I will be doing Weather Wednesday from Deer Valley today. We will talk about the upcoming storm as well as when we can expect a pattern change. You can view the videos by checking out @VisitUtah Instagram stories this afternoon.