Sunday, November 11, 2012

Accumulations So Far


As reported to the National Weather Service.  Totals through time indicated.

Snowbird: 46" (8 am Sunday)
Alta: 45" (6 am Sunday)
Alta-Collins: 42" (8 am Sunday)
Spruces: 35" (6 am Sunday)
Bountiful Bench: 28.5" (9am Sunday)
Cottonwood Heights: 25" (7 am Sunday)
Upper Millcreek: 24.5" (8 am Sunday)
Sandy (4852 ft): 22.7" (7 am Sunday)
Centerville: 18.2" (7 am Sunday)
Upper Avenues: 17" (7 am Sunday)

I suspect many of these are settled snow depth measurements (I have 15" at my house at 4800 ft in the Avenues).  Measurements taken every 24 or 12 hours and added would be larger.  These totals include snow from the frontal portion of the event on Friday.
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6 comments:

  1. AnonymousNovember 11, 2012 at 11:57 AM

    Hey Jim
    Cool blog. Im a retired powder junkie... But still follow snow totals and forecasts pretty closely. What a storm. A couple questions. What is your explanation for why Alta gets more snow from the lake effect than Brighton?

    Second, what is your long range prediction for our snowpack this winter?

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    Replies
    1. Jim SNovember 11, 2012 at 12:11 PM

      That is a question that hasn't been adequately answered yet. In terms of the fraction of winter precipitation produced by lake effect, Brighton is just to the east of the lake-effect maximum. This can be seen in Fig. 8 of this paper: http://www.inscc.utah.edu/~steenburgh/papers/DLEclimo.pdf. Lake-effect storms are pretty shallow and dump their loads pretty quickly when they hit the mountains. The fact that during northwesterly flow there is a longer fetch of mountains upstream of Brighton compared to Alta might make a difference in such shallow storms. A couple km matters in these events. Note, however, that the difference is not huge.

      My prediction for this winter is that I can't reliably predict what is going to happen. There are no indicators to tell us one way or the other what kind of year we will have.

      Jim

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  2. FritzripsNovember 12, 2012 at 9:37 AM

    Any idea why the storm completely missed Corner Canyon/Point of the Mountain area?

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  3. Jim SNovember 12, 2012 at 10:06 AM

    It was just outside the lake-effect snowbelt for this event given the flow direction.

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  4. FritzripsNovember 12, 2012 at 11:18 AM

    Thanks, Jim.

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  5. Dave CoyneNovember 12, 2012 at 2:31 PM

    Can we hit "repeat" on this storm?! that was fun!

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