Utah Daily Snow

Short Term Forecast

We currently have very pleasant weather, at least in my humble opinion. Highs in the 80s in the valley this weekend into early next week. Cooler mornings are perfect for riding the bike or doing hikes. 

Things will be changing middle of the upcoming week (Sept 20-21) as a cool fall trough settles into the Great Basin. This will drop temperatures by 15-20 degrees (F) and we should see some showers. Snow levels should dip down to around 10,000 feet in the Uintas and Wasatch which could allow for some additional accumulation once again. You can see the cooler temps clearly in the GFS' upcoming temperature anomalies through September 25:

As for snow amounts, accumulation of any significance is rare in September so I'd expect this to be light. GFS only shows a max of maybe a couple of inches over the next 9 days:

Perhaps more significant amounts to our north ID, MT, and WY. For us, anything that does fall should quickly melt. Main impact is going to be a bit of a seasonal chill in the air later next week and next weekend. Rain showers and/or high elevation snow should help keep the trails in primo conditions as we head toward peak leaf-peeping season. 

Extended Forecast

El Nino continues to look strong as we head into winter. I recently saw a post on X/Twitter showing previous occurrences of strong El Ninos (> +1.5C ONI) and in the seven previous strong El Nino winters, there was essentially no correlation to precip or temp in Northern Utah. Some winters were snowier than average, some drier than average. Some warmer, some cooler. Southern Utah certainly leaned a bit more toward the wet side but even in that case, there were still a couple of exceptions with dry winters during El Nino. This isn't really news as I've been saying this all along, but further evidence that anything is possible this winter. I would try not to get swept up in the El Nino hype. 

Evan | OpenSnow