TL;DR:
Clear through the end of the week. Another storm with more potential than the ones we've been seeing recently at the start of next week.
Nowcast:
It's a beautiful sunny day in Northern Utah today! Temperatures have warmed up from yesterday and are sitting around 17 at ridgelines and 24 at the trailheads/base. Winds are light and from the NW. We have a longwave ridge currently sitting over the region, providing nice, sunny weather.
Short-term:
There's not too much exciting to talk about from a short-term standpoint. As a ridge passes over the region, we will have cold, dry weather. I expect the air pollution in the Salt Lake Valley to increase throughout the weekend as we experience the large-scale subsidence associated with the ridge.
Long-term:
This is where things begin to get exciting. This is the first strong storm we've seen in over a month. The GFS generated Little Cottonwood Guidance from the UofU is going off. Currently, it is predicting ~40 inches, with most of that coming Wednesday. This is likely an overprediction as it is so far out, but still, the most promising thing we've seen in a while.
Looking at the time-height plot above, we can see the storm is associated with a cold frontal passage around 12Z on Wednesday (6 MST). Temperatures will warm up Tuesday afternoon/evening as the storm begins. The mountains might get some precipitation before the passage Wednesday morning, but I expect the bulk of the accumulation to happen after 6am MST.
As far as precipitation totals go, it's we're too far out to even begin to start putting numbers down. The NAEFS has a spread of 10-120 inches, so any estimate would be a shot in the dark. I'm confident it will be something, and it should be better than what we've been getting for the past month.
After Wednesday, the pattern continues to look active, so we could continue to get large storms through the end of February. Stay tuned for more forecasts where we'll dive into specifics.
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