Utah Daily Snow

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By Evan Thayer, Forecaster Posted 1 year ago November 24, 2022

Happy Thanksgiving!

Summary

Happy Thanksgiving! We have a lot to be thankful for today, including a touch of fresh snow and some more in the forecast. Mostly dry this weekend, but a couple of chances for snow next week.

Short Term Forecast

Yesterday's weak storm did about as good as we could have hoped. Several resorts in the central Wasatch reporting 2-3" of new snow. LCC did the best with the NW flow behind the front yesterday. A very solid early season base, combined with chalky snow from the low sun angle and 2-3" of fresh on top made for some solid turns. Despite our dry spell, LCC snotel still showing 228% of median snowpack. Coverage out there is so good for Thanksgiving!

We will be dry today and tomorrow. Another very weak brush-by system is possible late on Saturday. We could see some snow flurries but accumulations look unlikely. Most noticeable impact will be an increase of clouds on Saturday.

Then, we will have another system move in on Monday. The trend over the past 24 hours has been to have this system tap into less moisture from the Pacific and therefore be a bit less robust in terms of precipitation. We are still looking at the faster, more direct hit that we were a few days ago, but I just don't know how much of a punch this storm will pack. Here is the latest NBM output:

These totals are down about 30% from yesterday with generally 0.5-0.8" of liquid for the Wasatch mountains. You can also see a slight downward trend in the ensemble mean:

After our tiny weekend storm, we have a storm that increases the mean by 0.6-0.8" of liquid at Brighton. All things considered, right now it's looking like a storm that will bring 5-10", whereas yesterday it looked possible we could top a foot. Still, I think late Monday and Tuesday should offer good fresh snow riding. 

The other good news you can see in the above graph is an increasing confidence in a storm for later next week. More on that below...

Extended Forecast

We've finally got a bit more clarity on the first few days of December. Models are indicating that another storm is possible around Friday (Dec 2). It doesn't look like a major storm and it may be battling a ridge and weakening as it drops into our area, but most ensembles now show something reaching at least Northern Utah mountains:

We will have to keep an eye on this. On the far right, you can see that confidence in anything decreases dramatically beyond December 3rd with about half the ensembles showing a storm of some kind between Dec 3-8 and half keeping us dry. Let's hope when we check back tomorrow we see a more solid vertical column there in the middle, which would indicate further confidence in a storm for late next week. 

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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