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.