Loud pow, cold pow

TL;DR; Clear skies in the valley, with a cold front approaching. Expect snow to start in the Wasatch as early as tonight, with our first, weak system, picking up between Thursday and Friday. Then, let's hope the models hold and we get another storm system for Sunday, and perhaps much of next week.

 

Nowcast: 

Salt Lake Valley was met with clear skies this morning. A few things to note which help describe this occurrence. A storm is coming (more on this later). If we look back a day, we see stagnant winds (bottom left panel) hovering around Salt Lake Valley on 0000 UTC 02 Jan 2024 (5:00pm local on Jan 01). Now fast forward to 1500 UTC 03 Jan 2024 (8:00am local this morning), and we see much more active southerly winds. This certainly helped clear things up a bit. 

4 panel courtesy of the good folks of Utah ATMOS

We can take a different approach too, and look at the sounding page (sounding analysis for salt lake). Here we see a very shallow temperature inversion (red line) representing a thin boundary layer, which is far more easily mixed than a deep one. 

Finally, you can do what I did on my run this morning, and suggest that our clean air is explained by the Great Salt Lake, and its sea-breeze-like-effect. Under this phenomenon, we'd have seen the winds shift westward (away from the city) overnight to the warmer lake, resulting in clean air above the city, and far more PM2.5 concentration over the Lake. This effect is likely small however, but it does make for good small talk at any lingering holiday / new year parties. 

Runners enjoying clear air above the valley, with lingering smog above the Lake in the distance

Short-Term;

Now for the fun stuff. I'll try not to get too ahead of myself and have you all check back in for the short-term later in the week, but, things are starting to look good (better). 

Initially slated for this evening, the beginning of a storm seems to have pushed back to tomorrow (Thursday) into Friday afternoon, with another system pushing in Friday night into Sunday. We can expect 9-18" by Friday evening, and then another 20"+ by Monday. 

Everyone's favorite NAEFS Plume graph; Utah ATMOS

NAM forecast from SpotWx

Long-Term;

In fear of jinxing anything, I'll leave the Long-Term forecast at the Short-Term, and encourage everyone to keep checking back in to your Utah Ski Weather! 

Backcountry Comments: 

Avalanche danger is low, for now. If you managed to get out in the backcountry the past few days, you'll probably have found that our weakened surface layer of snow rides quite well. While this 'loud pow' has made for excellent riding conditions over the holidays, expect it to become the culprit of spiked avalanched danger in the near future. Continue checking in, and staying on top of the avalanche forecast provided by our good friends at the Utah Avalanche Center.