Saturday, March 24, 2018

Atmospheric River Aftermath

After returning from Seattle, I was finally able to sample the atmospheric river aftermath in the Wasatch backcountry today.  A polite descriptor of the conditions would be "variable."  It seemed strange, even in the upper elevations that were above the snow level, how little snow the storm produced given the amount of water it generated.  Maybe it blew to Evanston. 

Graupel was found in many areas.  In a few pockets it had collected into piles perhaps 20 cm deep. 


I don't know why, but I always enjoy digging into piles of graupel.

Exiting, we got a view down Little Cottonwood with lower clouds beginning to develop over the Salt Lake Valley. 


Periods of snow look likely for the mountains through Sunday night, although it's not looking like a major event.  The NAM is spitting out a total of about 4", although the always optimistic GFS and NAM-3km are putting out higher totals.  Anything appreciated at this point.

1 comment:

  1. I was at Solitude today and though they reported 10" from the storm I was only skiing the top 3" even at 10k in Honeycomb. The frozen trenches from the previous day indicated that it had in fact skied about 10". My thoughts are that the first 5" just froze solid once it got a chance freeze last night and even the colder 5" got melted from below by the underlying slush. I was in the process of heading to USA bowl to find a smooth underlying surface when my toe piece pulled out. I think if it was smooth underneath it would have skied alright today. Generally conditions end up better than I expect when I go searching. That was not the case today.

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