Our first storm in the series is now complete with storm totals from Sunday afternoon through Monday evening ranging generally from 9 to 14" with most mountains in the 12-14" range. The original forecast was 10-20", so it was certainly on the lower end of the forecast and a bit of a disappointment -- largely because we've gotten so used to storms over-delivering on the forecast this year. As for the skiing, I got reports of anything from "dust on crust" to "really really good". I think with the additional snow that fell after closing yesterday 3-6", today should be pretty good as well. 

We are in a break in the action for the first half of today at least. Southern Utah will see moisture stream in this morning with snow developing at Brian Head as well as Eagle Point. The moisture will work its way north quickly with snow reaching the Cottonwoods/PC area sometime this evening. We expect mostly southerly flow tonight into Wednesday before it gradually shifts more westerly. There is decently cold air in place, and plenty of moisture to work with. We are lacking a bit in organized dynamics this far from the low but the amount of moisture should overcome that problem. Snow levels will stay around or below 6000 feet and snow ratios should be near 12:1 over the high elevations. 

The NBM drops the following precip amounts through midday Thursday:

You can see that southern Utah is taking the brunt of the action with 2-3" of liquid possible in places there. That means 20-30" of snow is possible for the highest elevations near Brian Head. In northern Utah, amounts are generally 0.75-1.75". This is supported by the GEFS plumes for LCC which show about 1.4" of liquid by Thursday morning:

There's certainly a chance that the terrain could do a better job at enhancing these totals than expected and we could see even higher liquid amounts, but I'm going to err on the side of caution and continue with a general 0.75-1.75" of liquid which would amount to roughly 10-20" of snow with the possibility of a few areas going higher and approaching 2 feet. 

As for skiing/riding, Wednesday looks like the safe bet with storm skiing conditions. Thursday will have terrain openings and be more of a break day.

You can see on the plumes graph above but there's another distinct peak in precip on Friday. This is the next storm in the series and it will arrive late Thursday night and continue through Friday into Friday night. This system is different than the first two. It is coming out of the northwest and has much colder air with snow levels falling to all valley floors. It's also somewhat limited in moisture. WPC liquid amounts focus on northern Utah and are fairly meager:

Maybe 0.4-0.8" of liquid from Thursday night through Saturday PM. With good ratios, that could mean 6-12" of fluff, with LCC favored in a NW flow. 

Overall, we are looking at 1.25-2.5" of liquid over the next 5 days in Utah mountains and probably 1.5-3.5 feet of snow. These aren't astonishing amounts by our standards, but when you consider how this season has gone so far and that we are getting very close at setting some all-time snowpack records, any additional snow is impressive. More importantly for me, the skiing is going to remain good. 

It looks like we should generally dry out heading into next week. There will be a cut-off low that spins off the California coast and eventually should eject inland but right now that doesn't look likely to happen until later next week. Timing these systems is notoriously difficult. I think it's likely we see active weather return at some point, but we may see several days of a break before it does return. 

Evan | OpenSnow