Anticipation Builds

 TL;DR:

Dry weather continues in the short term while the likelihood of a significant storm this weekend is increasing.

Nowcast

It's cold out there! Temperatures range from 10-18F at lower and mid-elevations. On the highest peaks, Mt. Baldy is running right around 9F with a wind chill of -13F. That's pretty cold! Light to moderate winds can be expected with sustained winds around 30mph and gusts to 40mph on the highest ridgelines. The webcam image below from the top of Hidden Peak at Snowbird shows windy conditions with sunny skies above the stratus clouds capping the inversion in the Salt Lake Valley below. 

Image courtesy of Snowbird.

Short-Term Forecast

A longwave ridge of high pressure will continue to park itself, centered just off the coast of California. The loop below shows lower-level water vapor satellite imagery, with blue/white/green colors representing regions with more moisture and yellow/orange colors representing drier regions. Note the broad anticyclonic (clockwise) rotation of the ridge. Because this ridge is centered further to our west, it has allowed a series of shortwave troughs (low pressure) to drop down from the north, the most recent iteration of which will drop in from our NW Friday Evening/Saturday Morning. This system will just be a brush by with much of the synoptic dynamics (read - lift) petering out over Washington/Idaho before it makes its way to Utah.

Snow Totals through Saturday Evening

Little Cottonwood Resorts - 6 - 12 inches

Big Cottonwood Resorts - 6 - 10 inches

Wasatch Back Resorts - 4 - 8 inches

The above forecast is probably on the high end of probabilities but with prolonged moisture and some instability in the area, we may end up with some half-decent totals even though there is not a super well-defined frontal passage.

Long-Term Forecast

As Pete alluded to in yesterday's forecast, a storm Sunday into Monday is looking pretty good although it has been trending drier in recent model runs. The ensemble spread is still pretty high (11-55in for Alta) with the median of the NAEFS plumes right around 24 inches for the next 7 days. This was sitting closer to 30 inches yesterday although it did include some of the previous day's snow. Keep your eyes peeled on our blog for more forecasts touching on this system in the coming days.