Today's Forecasts Even More Depressing Than Yesterday's

Oh, how I wish there was a glimmer of hope for the start of ski season.  Each day I come in looking for a bonafide chance of a real storm, only to have my hopes dashed.  Yesterday's forecasts were depressing, but today's are even worse.  They are drier, with an even higher amplitude flow over North America for the foreseeable future.

It's a bit late for Halloween, but today's forecasts are really ghastly.  Plotted below are "postage stamps" of the 10-day, 500-mb height forecasts from the Global Ensemble Forecast Systems (GEFS).  Basically, there's barely a hint of upper-level flow anywhere over western North America except in the upper-left hand forecast where there is some modest southwesterly flow over the Pacific Northwest.

Source: Penn State E-Wall

In the Canadian ensemble, there are a couple of members that tease the Pacific Northwest, but there's not much for Utah. 

It is not uncommon for the actual pattern to verify outside the range of solutions produced by these ensembles, so it's not impossible that something sneaks through the net, but my take is that the odds of skiing in the central Wasatch through the end of next week are very low.  Although temperatures today are conducive to snowmaking, and I see some guns blowing on the Alta web cams, the pattern above is also terrible for snowmaking as temperatures in the mountains will be quite warm.

At least the mountain biking and hiking should be good.