Last night, my physical health and mental health needed a full night's sleep so I took a sleeping pill at 9 pm, neglected to set an alarm, and got a full 10 hours of shuteye. Yay! Just in time to wake up to another storm rolling in. 

We have continued to see some mostly light snow showers lingering from yesterday's departing storm. But for the most part, the snow tapered off yesterday afternoon. Totals were once again with an impressive 6-18" in the past 24 hours and generally 10-28" storm total. The big winner was Sundance with 28". Sundance looking absolutely incredible this morning:

Snowbird also with 28. A lot of other locations bested 20". A very good storm! 

Can't spend too much time dwelling on the past as we have another storm that is moving into the region today. SW flow once again will spread moisture into the state from SW to NE today. This storm is focusing its energy in the southern half of Utah, but models continue to show enough moisture streaming north to at least bring some light amounts to far northern Utah. The Central Wasatch, including the Cottonwoods and PC, could help provide lift for this moisture and we could end up seeing halfway decent amounts. Here is the latest NBM for this storm:

So clearly the biggest impact is the Grand Staircase area down in southern Utah. 1.5" of liquid for Brian Head could easily mean 1-2 feet of snow down there. If you look farther northern, you can also see the Cottonwoods area as a pocket of some decent totals with 0.5-1" of liquid. The GFS shows this well with 0.8" for Upper LCC in U of U's guidance by late Tuesday:

Snow should begin by this afternoon and continue off and on through Tuesday. My confidence is low in this storm as it requires moisture to reach up away from the core of the system and bring some snow for northern Utah mountains. There is a lot of skunk potential up here. Safe bet is southern Utah. The Cottonwoods could get 6-12" if things go right. Probably less for areas north of I-80, although it's possible stalled banding up there could add more. 

Thursday storm:

We will have another system dropping to our west on Thursday. This storm looks likely to mostly miss us as it drops down the Sierra then tracks to our south. It's weak anyway. Here is the latest GFS precip totals for this storm:

Perhaps a better chance once again for southern Utah, but northern Utah will likely only see some light snow showers. Always a chance this could trend east/north again, but for now I don't expect much. 

We are generally in a cool and dry pattern late this week into the weekend as a ridge builds along the coast. Utah will be on the backside of the ridge, which means we will stay relatively cool and should see periodic weak storms possibly bringing us some snow showers. Another one of these systems is possible for Sunday (Jan 22). We could see another storm later next week. 

Eventually, the ridge should move west farther out into the Pacific and Gulf of AK. This could open the storm door more for us toward the end of the month. Models have been consistent in showing this. Here is the latest EPS ensemble mean heights for the end of its 15-day run on January 30th:

Way too early to know details, but I'd suspect we have a good chance of remaining cold with chances for snow continuing and improving late in the month and into early February. 

Evan | OpenSnow