Powder to Kick of 25'

TL;DR: 

    Wind today and cooling temps as a cold front approaches. Snow through the weekend with the brunt on Saturday. Totals of 8-15" expected. Flurries to start the new week. 

Nowcast:

    This morning in the mountains, warm prefrontal winds exist out of the WSW, keeping temps relatively warm in the mid-thirties around mountain bases and dipping below freezing at mountain tops. Mountain top winds out of the WSW are in the mid 20's mph with gusts reaching up to the mid 40's. Broken clouds will persist.  

Alta Ski Area showing off this morning

Short term:

     Through the day today temperatures will drop from this morning as the impending cold front approaches. Off the Western U.S. coast a trough is building, as it moves inland winds will increase through the day today and veer (shift clockwise) as the front approaches.

Courtesy of UofU Atmospheric Sciences

    

    The impending cold front will arrive early Saturday morning around 4:00 (denoted by the green highlight above). With it, temperatures will drop significantly into the low teens. The brunt of the storm will come early on with precipitation rates peaking around 2.5"/hr-3.5"/hr in the upper Cottonwoods. With significant temperature drop as the storm progresses SLR will drop along with it bringing some fine right side up Utah Champaign pow to welcome the new year. The Northern Wasatch will be favored by this storm yet snow is to be expected for the more Southerly resorts as well. 

Snow Totals for the upper Cottonwoods are expected to be in the 9-15" range.  

Long term:

                As we look ahead to the coming week the sporadic flurries that will close the weekend may stick around for the start of the week.  With the passage of this weekend's trough, another shortwave will develop behind it, yet may dig too deep down the west coast to bring significant snow totals. That said, cool temperatures and broken clouds on Monday and Tuesday should keep the skiing good with little flurries to compliment.

Avalanche Comments:

                Following a difficult few days for the backcountry community here in Utah we can’t stress enough the importance of being properly equipped with the knowledge, equipment, and experience to travel and ski in the backcountry. Know before you go and have the right equipment. For all things avalanche check in with our friends over at the Utah Avalanche Center.

For reports from the recent avalanche fatalities see the observations page.

 

Happy New Year to all, and to (most) a snowy night!

TL;DR:

Snow tonight and this weekend, with a warmer-than-normal couple of days in between.

Nowcast:

A quick note first: I apologize for the sporadic/non-existent updates the past couple weeks - we should get back to regularly scheduled programming next week.

Now to the forecast - this first day of the New Year has been cold and cloudy ahead of an approaching storm; we stayed dry for most of the day, but snow has started in most of the Central Wasatch and will continue through tomorrow morning. See below for details...

Short-term:

Tonight's snowfall looks decent - here's forecasted snowfall totals through 11am tomorrow from the GFS (left), CMC (middle), and NAM (right):

 

GFS, CMC, and NAM total snowfall, courtesy of Tropical Tidbits

(The Central Wasatch resorts are in the green circle, and the colors' meaning is on the far right.)

There's a fair amount of model disagreement still - for Central Wasatch totals, the pessimistic GFS is showing no more than 6", the CMC is showing 6-12", and the NAM is showing up to 20" in the Cottonwoods. Based on these models and a couple others I haven't shown, I'd say 5-10" by noon tomorrow is reasonable, with the potential for slightly higher amounts in the northern mountains (Snowbasin/PowMow/Bear River Range) as well as NW-flow favored areas like LCC.

Temperatures won't be super cold so the snow won't be the lightest, but there is still work to be done on our snowpack numbers so I'd say that's okay...

Long-term:

After tomorrow, we have a break until about Saturday; during this break, it's supposed to get fairly warm for this time of year with temps up to 10 °F above normal.

Backcountry comments:

Avalanche conditions are dangerous right now, so if you'll be traveling in the backcountry, make sure you have the proper training and equipment and know before you go. For the avalanche forecast and other avy-related resources, check out utahavalanchecenter.org.