Moist northwest flow today into tonight with a weak disturbance brushing the area tomorrow.  We could see snow off and on in the high elevations, particularly in areas favored by NW flow such as Cottonwoods.  Accumulations should be light, but don't be too surprised if we get a few inches of fresh snow tonight in northern Utah.  With more terrain opening today and potential for a softening layer tomorrow, the skiing should be very good! 

We are fully wrapping up the storm from Tuesday-Wednesday.  It was a very hard forecast so I'm happy to say that generally things went as planned.  Yesterday I forecasted 3-6" with the cold front and 5-10" in the Cottonwoods.  Most resorts were in 3-6" range and all Cottonwood resorts were in the 5-10".  Snow made it far enough south to give Eagle Point a good shot of snow.  They got another 10" and had storm totals approaching 2 feet on the upper mountain.  Got an email today that they are going to try to open tomorrow and will have the majority of their terrain open.  A great and rapid turnaround of events for them! 

Northern Utah ended up with storm totals ranging from 6" to 20".  Due to the nature of the storm and the high snow levels, the amount of snow received varied greatly from location to location.  The storm was impressive for some locations.  Alta picked up nearly 2" of liquid.  In a colder storm, that could easily be 3 feet of snow.  When all is said and done, what matters for a snowpack is the liquid content rather than the number of inches.  The skiing was very good, but not epic.  However, it was a very valuable storm going forward.  

After tomorrow, we will ridge up for several days thru the weekend into early next week.  Warm conditions on the mountain with inversions developing to some extent in the valleys.  

The good news is that the ridge won't last too long.  By the second half of next week storms will start to try to push into the west coast and break down the ridge.  The first system looks like it will lose the battle and lose most of its strength.  However, a follow-up system should have more success.  Right now it looks like we will see the storm arrive by Thursday or Friday of next week.  Not sure on how big the storm will be.  Euro has a moderate storm with decent snowfall for the mountains: 

The current GFS is even a bit stronger than the EC for northern Utah: 

Right now we are at least a week away from the event so details have yet to be ironed out.  I'd guess that this weekend we will start to get a much clearer picture of what we can expect.  

Looking beyond this first storm, it seems that the trough over west remains in place.  That means that the door will be open.  What kind of storms walk through that door remains to be seen... Hope for the best! 

Evan | OpenSnow