The snow arrived yesterday evening in Northern Utah after starting yesterday morning in southern Utah. Snow totals have generally been about expected with highest totals in southern Utah with 8" at Brian Head and 10" at Eagle Point. Northern Utah resorts reporting anywhere from 3" to 9" this morning with most resorts in the 7" range. However, it is snowing hard in places and will continue to snow off and on today and tonight so accumulations will be climbing. 

The forecast was for 10-20" by tomorrow morning and we are well on our way to getting there. You can see in the below HRRR graph that we have a long way to go with a lot more liquid equivalent possible:

The star indicates our current location. Models generally show another 0.5-1.25" of additional liquid to fall between now and tomorrow morning. Alta-Collins already reporting 0.85" of liquid as of 6 am this morning. It will be interesting to see how much this boosts the statewide snowpack. As of yesterday we were at 24.7" average and the record is 26" -- so we need to add an average of 1.3" to the snowpack to get there. It sounds easy, but a lot of the snotel sites are lower elevation and 1.3" is quite a bit -- in fact it's about 10% of our annual average snowfall statewide. 

Yesterday skied deeper than it was and I think today will be more of the same as the snow has good "body" to it. Also, it will keep snowing so the snow will be deeper than reports. The forecast radar shows occasional snow showers this morning, before a more organized band of convective showers moves in this afternoon:

We could see some heavy snow for a period this afternoon and maybe even some lightning. Then the flow turns more NW tonight with snow showers continuing, especially in favored areas. Here is the expected liquid remaining by midday Thursday:

In total, another 6-12" is likely by tomorrow morning in the high elevations of northern Utah with another 4-8" in southern Utah. 

Thursday night into Friday another system pushes in. This one is colder with more of a NW component for once -- seems like we've seen so few of those this year with all the SW flow action. Not a ton of moisture, but cold air, good ratios, and orographics will help with accumulations. In general, amounts look to be 0.4-0.8" of liquid but that could easily drop 6-12" of fluff. Here is the WPC for this storm:

Certainly I think LCC is the most likely spot to see good accumulation. Additional waves of energy may ripple through later in the weekend on Saturday night into Sunday with snow showers continuing in a very cold spring airmass. 

From a ski/snowboard perspective, every day this week has the opportunity to be good. Today will have fresh snow with more falling. Tomorrow will have terrain openings and deep snow. Friday will have fluff falling on top of all that. More chances for snow this weekend. Can't go wrong! 

Next week is very difficult to predict. We have a low that will spin off the California coast. Yesterday it looked like it wouldn't eject inland until late in the week. Now it may move in sooner around midweek. Models are all over the place but chances for snow are there with more than 50% of ensembles showing precip in the Wednesday/Thursday period. We will just have to watch and see. These "bowling ball" closed lows are a hallmark of spring in the west and always a headache to forecast. 

Evan | OpenSnow

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