Summary
We clear out and, in some cases, dig out from yesterday's storm. Dry until late Thursday when we get clipped with a storm on the weaker side of the spectrum Thursday night. Clearing out again for the latter half of the upcoming weekend.
Short Term Forecast
Our storm has wrapped up and we are left with cold, but quiet conditions. Yesterday, we had a consistent, shallow NW flow for most of the day. That allowed for good orographic snowfall in favored areas mostly west of the Wasatch Crest. When orographics are shallow, sometimes there's not enough forcing to push the snow even to the upper reaches of LCC and you often see heavier snowfall in the mid-canyon locations. I've had a few such days where Baby Thunder was the deepest snow in LCC. Not sure if that was exactly the case yesterday, but Snowbird is reporting 22" storm totals to Alta's 19".
Here is a look at the same graph I posted on Saturday before the storm started at all. I added a hand-drawn line of approximate accumulation at Alta (red line):
You can see we got 4" of somewhat unexpected snow on Saturday, then we followed the expected snowfall very closely the rest of the storm and ended up with slightly more than the forecast. Good job to our OpenSnow model blend!
Totals in non-favored areas were much lower. 10-12" in BCC. 5-6" in Park City. 10" at Brian Head. 5" at Snowbasin. Generally 4-8" seems likely elsewhere. It was not a storm that was an "equal-opportunity provider".
We now look ahead to our next storm. We have at least 3 days of dry weather. On Thanksgiving Thursday, we are going to see clouds increase with a chance for snow showers in the mountains by late in the day with a good chance for snow Thursday night into early Friday. This is thanks to a storm that is clipping the region on the backside of the ridge on the west coast. You can see this storm in this GFS loop of 24-hour precip:
It has decent cold air but is lacking in dynamics and moisture. Overall precipitation is fairly modest:
I'd say 3-6" is most likely for most northern Utah mountains in a best case scenario. Doesn't sound like much, but we should have more resorts/terrain open in the coming days so hopefully it will give us some halfway decent skiing on Friday.
Extended Forecast
Again, high pressure takes control by Saturday of the upcoming weekend. A few models try to bring something weak into the area at the end of the month but I'm not buying it. In general, the pattern looks stubbornly dry where storms may be the exception, not the rule. Hoping for a more substantial pattern change but not seeing it yet...
Evan | OpenSnow
What's New