Calm Before the Storm

It's been a busy morning in the DOW, but presently we are enjoying the calm before the storm.  There is a whopper of a front coming in.  Post-frontal wind gusts at Hat Island reached 63 miles per hour.  We're really looking forward to it!

After getting the DOW running ~730 this morning, we sampled some fairly steady snow that was falling in Little Cottonwood Canyon (LCC).  The large-scale flow was out of the southwest, and a nice shallow cumulus cloud hung over the LCC-American Fork divide.   Radar echoes were strongest in the upper canyon and to the east.

More recently, precipitation rates have let up.  It's been doing little in the lower canyon, but still snowing lightly in the upper canyon, as shown in the picture below.

The lull has been good as we've been able to get some food and fine-tune our scanning strategies in preparation for the main event to come.  We have five vertical scans at 1-degree intervals painting out Little Cottonwood, with additional vertical scans examining the front, Twin Peaks, and Lone Peak.  We also have several horizontal scans painting out the Salt Lake Valley. 

The radar suggests we are in for an exciting afternoon.  I don't think we'll be leaving the cab once the front gets here.