Give me a S, give me a N, give me a O, give me a W!

 TL;DR:

       As we head into the weekend the mean flow has shifted from southwesterly to northwesterly. There is a small scale feature that will impact Oregon and Washington but will largely dissipate before it reaches Utah. However, due to this northwest flow, Little Cottonwood could be favored for some precipitation. The Little Cottonwood Canyon guidance at the University of Utah is putting the total at ~10 inches. I'm going to go with more like 8. 

Early next week, a deep trough will dig down the coast and send lots of moisture and instability our way. A perfect recipe for more snow. 

Nowcast:

    Currently, Alta is sitting at brisk 4 degrees F. The skies are clear and the sun in shinning. I expect this to continue throughout the day with some high clouds coming through towards the end of the day. 

Courtesy: Alta Ski Area 

Short Term:

    In the short term, there are two features headed toward our part of the world. Interestingly, both of these storm systems originate from the same large scale trough that is digging, and will continue digging down the west coast of the US. Let's look at some pictures to illustrate this. 

Courtesy: University of Utah Dept. Atmospheric Sciences

On this map, I've highlighted the low center that will drop down the coast of Western Canada over the next few days with a red star. As it moves down the coast, the strong winds that are highlighted with the red circle and arrow will advect moisture and instability inland. However, the trough will continue to dig down the coast, as it does we will get a short break. 

Courtesy: University of Utah Dept. Atmospheric Sciences

After this break, the trough will have dug enough down the coast of California that it will "sling-shot" moisture and instability back into Utah. This is a very similar storm regime to the one that happened earlier this week and a very profitable one. It is particularly profitable if the region of strong winds, instability, and moisture (again highlighted by the red circle and arrow) miss the Sierra Mountains. For this storm I predict that we're really going to see it really turn on Monday night or Tuesday morning. We'll see how the models have it develop over the next few days, but right now it's looking good for 20-30 inches. 

Long Term:

    In the long term, the GFS is leaning towards there being a break in the storms as a slight ridge starts to set up over the Western US that keeps another storm to the west of us. The European models are not showing this, and have the storm tracking into the Western US. It doesn't look super strong and we're pretty far out at this point. We'll just have to wait and see where the models land, fingers crossed we keep it going!