Sunday, January 27, 2013

Breath Deep!

Ding Done the Inversion Is (almost) Dead!
The inversion has finally cracked!  At least for most of the Salt Lake Valley, south winds ahead of an approaching cold front scoured out the fog and smog last night.  Weather cameras show fog and smog are lingering in some areas, as you can just make out in the weather cam image below.

Looking NW from Holiday.  Note smog/haze just beyond downtown SLC.
Source: Meteorological Solutions Inc. 
With the inversion nearly behind us, it's time to move onto better things, snow!  The snowpack in the Cottwonwoods has really suffered over the past month.  We now sit at only 79% of average and, in fact, we're almost even with where we were last year at this time.

Water year 2013 snowpack SWE at Snowbird (green line) compared
to the 1981–2010 average (blue) and 2012 (red).  Source: NRCS & NWS.
We have a cold front coming in for later today and tonight that should bring a much needed dump to the entire Wasatch Range.  Let's hope this one holds together, as we seem to have been teased rather than treated by recent storms.  

2 comments:

  1. Great posts, Jim! I was wondering where you find those snow pack graphs... Are the available for CO? Thanks!

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