Old Man Winter Will Be Busting Down The Door

For the last 5 days or so models have been showing the front entering Northern Utah late Thursday evening and moving the SLC area around midnight. Now both the NAM and GFS are showing a delay in the onset of precipitation until late morning Friday. Not a ton of moisture with the initial front but could see a brief period of moderate to heavy snow in the mountains and lighter snow in the valley during the day Friday. There may be a break after the front on Friday evening before the instability and moisture associated with the cold pool move into the area. Friday night and Saturday we’ll see the best dynamics and the best orographics for widespread moderate to heavy snowfall. There will be a good chance for lake enhancement or a lake effect band downwind of the lake. Best guess right now would be east-southeast of the lake. Over southern Davis County and Northern Salt lake County toward Park City. We’ll have to monitor the lake effect situation as we get closer as it is notoriously difficult to forecast.

When we look at the two aspects of this system, the front and instability behind the front, we can split the system into two separate parts to make our snowfall predictions. The initial front on Friday looks like it will put down 4-8″ for the mountains and only a couple inches in the valleys. Then the cold pool on Saturday has potential to drop up to 6″ in the valleys with more than that possible under lake effect band if one sets up. The mountains will likely see over a foot of snow on Friday night-Saturday night time frame. There isn’t incredible moisture associated with the system. But the direction of the flow aloft will allow for good orographics and the cold air will create very high snow:water ratios so just 1 inch of liquid qpf will likely yield 18 inches of snow.

With all that in mind, by midday Sunday, we expect the following totals:
1-2 feet above 7,000 ft. (with possibly more in orographically favored areas or under lake effect band)
6-12 inches in mountain valleys / high benches of Wasatch Front
Up to 6″ on valley floors

Next week is still a little unclear but it’s looking like we may be clipped by another system mid-week however it looks weaker/warmer. We’ll keep our focus on the storm at hand for now.