Friday, January 11, 2013

Near Record Snowfall

The Parrish Creek Snotel in the Wasatch Mountains east of Centerville has received 43 inches of snow in 18 hours if the automated snow depth sensor is to be believed.

Note that the total snow depth increased from 33 to 76 inches from 1500 MST yesterday to 0900 MST this morning.

The latest radar shows it is still dumping there.


Utah's record 24-hour snowfall is 55 55.5 inches.  I think they would have a shot at it if someone was actually making measurements at 6- or 12-hour intervals as is commonly done for official snow measurements.  Instead, we only have a total snow depth measurement and compaction is starting to occur.  As a result, although it is still snowing hard there, the snow depth dropped to 75" in the past hour.  It bears watching anyway.

7 comments:

  1. The Farmington site would probably be on par with that if it were reporting a recent snow depth. Its snow depth increased 26 inches between yesterday afternoon and 8 AM this morning. It has received an inch of SWE since then, which would probably put it between 40 and 50 inches total using snow densities from earlier in the event.

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  2. Adam/Jim: Do you know of any nicknames for this mountain range? I put a note about this in the forecast discussion on the Utah Ski Weather page (for Mountains east of Bountiful/Centerville/Ogden).

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  3. People usually just call it the Northern Wasatch or the Bountiful area mountains. Yes, imagination is lacking...

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  4. Replies
    1. Likely pounded. These snotels show that substanital snows fell in the Wasatch all the way down through City Creek Canyon. The hardscrabble site is in the valley east of the Sessions and suggests some dropoff in snowfall on the lee side, but the SWE is higher, so I'm not sure what to think. There could be some dropoff in snowfall as you move eastward.

      Louis Meadow: 25 to 57"
      Hardscrabble: 13 to 28" (seems a bit low based on SWE)
      Lookout Peak: 32 to 52"

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  5. The Salt Lake Tribune said that this storm broke the record for 24 hour snowfall which was only 4 inches. Could this be true? It did say that was from 12AM to 12AM. But even that seems way too low. I found a quote that said Salt Lakes "Greatest snowfall in 24 hours: 18.4 inches, Oct. 17-18, 1984"

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    Replies
    1. It is probably the record for that calendar day. I don't know why the NWS or the press even mentions these given the infrequent nature of major storms and the short climate record. It would be better to concentrate on all time, seasonal, or maybe monthly records when it comes to precipitation.

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