Snow for the Weekend

TL;DR Snow falls today and brings minimal accumulations to the central Wasatch. A bigger storm arrives early on Friday and lasts throughout the day.

Nowcast: It is snowing throughout the central Wasatch under southwesterly flow. Temperatures at mountain crest level are around 20 °F, and near 30 °F at resort bases. Brighton is the only resort reporting new snow with 1" of fresh, although Deer Valley's snow stake indicates a few inches in the Wasatch back:

Credit: Deer Valley Resort

Snow will continue until mid-day until tapering off in the afternoon.

Short-Term: 

The GFS forecasts an upper-level trough to pass through Utah at 1200 UTC (5:00 a.m. MST) on Friday, as indicated by the 500 mbar height map shown below.

Credit: University of Utah Department of Atmospheric Science

The U-shapped black contours in Utah in the map above indicate this trough, which brings an associated band of heavy precipitation, with 3-h precipitation rates between 0.25 and 0.5 inches. 

Credit: University of Utah Department of Atmospheric Science

This is a cold system, with 700-mbar temperatures around -10 °C, yielding snow-to-liquid ratios near 20:1. The GFS forecasats snow to continue in the central Wasatch under post-frontal northwesterly flow until around midnight on Saturday. The storm could produce up to 20" for NW flow favored areas. My concern for this storm is that the European model is not nearly as potent with its trough (not shown). If this solution verifies, we'd see less total accumulation for the storm. Either way, it's a nice low-density storm that should provide a great day of storm skiing on Friday with hopeful terrain openings under bluebird skies on Saturday.

Mid-Long Range:

After our storm on Friday, high pressure builds back in the intermountain west, under cold temperatures. 

Embedded short-wave troughs in the large-scale upper level flow could bring chances for light snowfall accumulations on Sunday and Monday, though it will not amount to much. Beyond that, there are no signs for major storms until after mid-month.

Backcountry comments:

If you will be traveling in the backcountry make sure you have the proper equipment and know before you go. For the whole avalanche forecast and all things avalanche head over to our friends at the Utah Avalanche Center.