Utah to continue to receive some POW!

 A low pressure system will cutoff from the general flow and drop down the west coast over the next couple days before ejecting inland.  It will have a lot of energy and moisture to work with, but looks like it will track over northern Arizona.  A bummer for us in the Wasatch as we’ll likely see very little snow from this, but good news for the mountains of Southern Utah and Northern AZ that really need some snow.

Attention then turns to potentially stronger systems that may bring some great skiing and riding to the area leading up to Christmas (or the end of the world, depending on your perspective).  The eastern pacific ridge retrogrades westward, allowing for the storm door to open up for the west coast and areas inland (Utah).  The first of these systems is being handled differently by each model. The GFS is weaker with the system and keeps it mostly in the northwest with just a few showers for northern Utah this weekend, it does eventually drop the system into the Great Basin, but not until early next week.  The Euro and GEM are similar with the strength position of the system, but differ on general timing of the heaviest precip.  The GEM wants to bring heavy snow to the area starting  late Saturday, while the EC holds off until Sunday.  Both solutions are stronger and farther south with the system than the GFS.  General consensus in the meteorology world is that the EC and GEM are the better models with this particular feature based on better ensemble support and a better recent track record.  But the stubbornness of the GFS to come around over the past few days keeps confidence low.  We believe that we have a decent shot at a  significant storm on approximately Sunday the 16th if these trends hold.  Snow levels will likely be at valley floors for this system as well.  I told you all to just hang on till mid-month… fortunately mother nature provided some frequent small storms to make the wait a bit easier.

The synopsis is we will have a break Tuesday and Wednesday, a chance for light snow Thurs/Fri as the cutoff low tracks to our south, and then a chance for a better storm this weekend.
Long-range outlook still looking good with the progressive pattern continuing and systems dropping in for the next couple weeks.  We are either going to have a nice snowy end of the world on the 21st or a great holiday ski season.   I’m okay with either.

We’ll keep you posted this week on how the weekend storm is looking….