Utah Daily Snow

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

By Evan Thayer, Forecaster Posted 1 year ago December 6, 2022

All Smiles!

Summary

Snow continued to fall yesterday. Southern Utah is seeing snow showers today and tomorrow before that lifts back north late Wednesday. A stronger storm is looking like a good possibility for the weekend. All of this as our snowpack continues to swell.

Short Term Forecast

Yesterday was incredible. Our boundary front stalled and even lifted back north yesterday morning. I talked about the possibility of that, but the reality was even better than expected. A persistent SW flow kept snow falling for most of the day. Some impressive additional totals with Brighton claiming another 11" for a storm total of 22". I'm somewhat skeptical as the local gauges don't support quite that much. Neighboring Solitude, however, reported another 8" for 18" storm total so it's not out of the question. Deer Valley, another SW flow favorite picked up another 7" for 13" storm total! LCC added another 4" or so for a foot total. 6" at Sundance for 9" storm total. You get the idea -- it was a very good day. All reports from around the Wasatch were that it skied exceptionally well. 

Of course, all this new snow is falling on an impressive snowpack. Snowbird now sitting at 239% of median for the date! 

It's just amazing to see! 

Our storm system is mainly impacting southern Utah over the next 36 hours as showers spin up into the southern half of the state. There's not a ton of dynamics or moisture, but a few inches of snow is likely in the mountains of Brian Head and Eagle Point. Late on Wednesday, this system is going to finally get ejected out. Latest trend has been to pull it north again. In this scenario, the Cottonwoods/PC area could get some showers on Wednesday evening/night. Not significant, but we could get an inch or two for Thursday morning. 

Then, our attention turns to a storm for this weekend. Timing remains difficult to pinpoint. The Euro and Canadian and Icon models show the main event for Sunday, but have some overrunning moisture as early as Friday. The GFS brings the main system in Saturday evening and overnight. When I look at the individual ensembles, I think there's more support for a Sunday event than anything else. But you can see how scattered they are with both timing and amounts:

At this point, about the most we can say is we should see at least a halfway decent storm this weekend, with the highest likelihood for snow on Sunday. 

Extended Forecast

We should start to clear out late Monday and Tuesday of next week, but there are some hints that we may see another system around December 15-16. This one could be fighting a building ridging along the west coast so I'm not confident in its arrival. In general, the pattern seems to favor a big ridge building just along west coast of BC and SE Alaska. This is somewhat similar to the pattern we saw in mid-November. It could dry us out a bit, but we should see plenty of cold air on the backside of the ridge. 

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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