Wasatch Weather Weenies

Through a number of channels, including this one at The Blaze , you can access the map below by Redditor atrubetskoy approximating how much snow is needed to cancel school. A map like this can be the source of pride (congrats northern New Englanders) or shame (bury your heads southerners).  Of course, like all estimates, this one has its shortcomings.  For example, having grown up in upstate NY in that area of dark blue where 24+ inches is allegedly needed to close school, I can tell you that schools closed regularly with less snow than that.   Another shortcoming is that driving conditions and safety are not necessarily directly related to how much snow falls.  Winter storms are incredibly complicated.  They can include freezing drizzle, freezing rain, sleet, and snow of differing water contents and crystal types.  Road characteristics, such as temperatures, also vary from storm to storm and during storms.   Last year's freezing rain event...

Things are going to be interesting in northern Utah through tomorrow (Thursday) as a tap of tropical air originating near Hawaii moves across northern California and southern Oregon and pushes into the state.  The moisture plume, known as an atmospheric river , is very apparent in the water vapor satellite image below, which includes an analysis of integrated water vapor (contours, with warmer colors indicating higher values). Integrated water vapor is the total amount of water vapor in the atmosphere.  As this particular atmospheric river pushes into the Great Basin, integrated water values with reach values with a return interval over northern Utah of about once every five years during the three week period centered on today.  Thus, this is a fairly juicy airmass for this time of year. Source: National Weather Service In addition, the winds are quite strong and and therefore the transport of moisture accompanying this atmospheric river is especially high. ...

A rare weather phenomenon known as a cold front will be passing through northern Utah tomorrow night.  Be sure to get out and experience it first hand as cold frontal sightings are indeed quite rare these days. Tomorrow looks to be an interesting day in the prefrontal environment as temperatures aloft remain quite mild and clouds and precipitation (valley rain, mountain snow above perhaps 7500 feet) drop into the state.  Looks like a good garbage-bag ski afternoon if you are headed to the mountains, especially if you are going to the northern Wasatch.  How quickly the inversion scours out is unclear, but assuming it goes, which I think is likely, we may see temperatures pop up into the upper 40s or near 50 in the Salt Lake Valley, which would be a wonderful change.  Keep your fingers crossed. Tomorrow (Wednesday) night, the cold front pushes through and will be the death knell for any lingering remnants of the inversion (don't let the door hit you on the way o...

Further evidence that civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice (quote from Will Durant).  The avalanche footage below, posted by YouTube user akiwiguy101 and shot near Valdez Alaska, is pretty mind boggling and enough entertainment for today!

In a typical year, this wouldn't be much to talk about, but this year is different.  The latest GFS (and EC) are hinting at a modest pattern change (I don't want to sell it as anything more than that) with some westerly flow breaking into the western United States and bringing some precipitation into the state midweek. Much will depend on the details, but at least this will help stir up the air around here and maybe help freshen up the mountain snowpack a bit.  Right now the models lack agreement on the gory details, so we'll just have to see how things play out this week.

Today was my first venture into the Wasatch since returning from New York.  Near as I can tell, nothing has changed in the 3 weeks since I left.  The winter of our discontent continues. The quote of the day was provided by a 5 year old in the parking lot who said, "well, at least there is snow."  Indeed.  And a child shall lead them.  Despite extreme thirst for powder, most people I met today were smiling and enjoying the sun.  Attitude is everything. The models are hinting at a pattern shift with some storminess perhaps coming our way midweek.  We'll take a closer look as it approaches.  Anything that will bring an end to this perverse inversion will be appreciated.

Although the western U.S. has been dominated by a ridge this winter, the eastern U.S. has seen the opposite end of the spectrum and has experienced a series of cold surges that have made it feel at times like a "real winter."  This has been great for our lake-effect project, OWLeS, as we have had plenty of storms to sample. Today, however, our students on the Tug Hill Plateau woke up to temperatures of -21ºF.  They then had a little fun to see if throwing boiling water into air this cold can produce a cloud of supercooled liquid water droplets and ice crystals (WARNING: This can be a hazardous activity that can yield burns  if you toss too much water, don't toss it properly away from you, or throw it on spectators). Click here for the video (mp4 format, courtesy Derek Jensen and Peter Veals). With such cold air in the east, I've heard a number of entirely unscientific comments about this finally being the end of global warming, which of course gave Jon Stew...

I'm sharing today some remarkable satellite images of Mount Shasta that were posted by a reader of the California Weather Blog . A bad snow year is one thing, but losing ground is painful.  Here's the latest web cam from the Mount Shasta Ski (er Dust) Park. Source: Mount Shasta Ski Park One of our students who is working in California sent me this photo looking across Donner Pass from Judah Peak where they found 150 vertical feet of recrystalized snow on north aspects after a 3 hour drive. Credit: Neil Lareau Of course, there's no such thing as bad turns, only some turns are better than others.  Then again, there's nothing wrong with winter hiking.

I'm going to have an interesting day today as I leave suffering for misery.   This morning, I'm in upstate New York.  It was -11F when I woke up this morning and was brutally cold.  Upstate New Yorkers like to say that there's no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate dress.  However, they are a hardy lot.  My niece left for the bus this morning wearing a thin pair of slip on shoes.  Ah, teenagers... Later tonight I arrive in Salt Lake City where misery awaits.  I've been watching the air quality there the past few days and it looks nasty as the PM2.5 concentrations have been flirting with the National Ambient Air Quality Standard for several days.  One thing that is interesting and that I don't understand are the huge fluctuations from day to night in PM2.5 concentration.  These are as large as I've seen.  Perhaps someone out there who knows more about air chemistry can comment. PM2.5 concentrations in the Salt Lake ...

Utah, SUNY-Albany, Center for Severe Weather Research, and Pulaski High staff and students with the Doppler on Wheels "DOW7".  Source: Oswego County Today. One of the fun things we get to do when on field deployment is visit local schools.  Nothing gets them more excited than when we roll in with one of the Center for Severe Weather Research's Doppler on Wheels radars, which is one of my favorite toys for research and education.    Here's a great article from Oswego County Today discussing our outreach activities at Pulaski High School about a week ago.

It was a bittersweet day today as I left the Tug Hill Plateau and began my return trip back to Salt Lake City.  I look forward to seeing the family, but it was hard leaving the great snow and the many friends I've made on the Tug Hill Plateau. Mother Nature has treated us well and she gave me a great parting gift in the form of about 10 inches of beautiful low-density snow overnight.  It was nice to see the big snow blower in action once again. We got more great data during last night's storm and I left a couple of couple of students on the Tug in case we are fortunate enough to see another storm or two in the next 10 days.  It has been so active during our field program, however, that we may run out of soundings and other resources before the 29th, which is the last scheduled day of operations.  If that happens, we'll be happy to pack up and head home early as the field program has been a huge success. Of course, after successful sampling last night, I took...

Cultivating snow snobbery at a young age.  The author's son at Alta, UT, April 30, 2011. If there is one thing that skiers like to argue about it is who has the best snow (or terrain).  Living in Utah, a state that has trademarked the phrase Greatest Snow on Earth , I was infected by powder snobbery many years ago and have often participated vociferously in these arguments. Of course "best" or "greatest" cannot be scientifically evaluated as they are ultimately a reflection of the eye of the beholder.  From a skiing perspective, if you are looking for great snow, there are probably three key factors to consider: 1. Quality : Typically determined by the water content of the snow, although there are other factors (see item 3 below) 2. Quantity : How much snow falls. 3. Intangibles: How does the snow fall?  How frequent and large are the storms?  Does the snow tend to fall right-side-up or upside down?  Is the area prone to rain-on-snow events? Et...

Today we have been examining lake-effect snowfall in the area around Syracuse and the Finger Lakes. Since my team concentrates primarily on the Tug Hill Plateau, we essentially had a day off and opted to drive to the Penn Yan airport to check out the University of Wyoming King Air research aircraft before its scheduled noon departure. The King Air is a really cool instrument for studying lake-effect and other storms.  It has a number of "probes" that sample small particles in clouds and help us to understand the small "microphysical" processes that contribute to snow formation. It also has a cloud radar and cloud lidar, which tell us about the characteristics of the clouds and storm above and below the flight track.  The concept is similar to the weather radars you are familiar with, but we generally collect a "curtain" of data above and below the flight track rather than scanning the storm like a weather radar. The inside is more cr...

We are now approaching the half-way point of the winter snow accumulations season in the western mountains and the snowpack situation is looking pretty dire in most areas except those near the Continental Divide of Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. Source: NRCS/WRCC Basin average snow water content in nearly all major river basins of Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, southwest Idaho, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico are below average and, in many instances, well below average.   In Utah, despite the recent storm cycle, the Wasatch are sitting solidly below average and, at least in the case of Snowbird, we are running behind last year's dismal showing. Source: CBRFC As one moves eastward, the situation improves.  Many locations near the Continental Divide are near average, including the Tower Snotel in the Park Range north of Steamboat in Colorado where the snowpack snow-water equivalent is roughly double that at Snowbird (Coloradoans gloat here…).   ...

An interesting aspect of jet stream behavior is that when the western U.S. is under a ridge, the eastern U.S. is usually under a trough (and vice versa).  This is because the typical distance between long-wave ridges and troughs at jet stream level is about the distance across the contiguous U.S. This means that if you are a powder hound, when Utah loses (meaning it is dry and under a ridge), the Tug Hill Plateau wins (meaning it is getting lake-effect and under a trough).  It's now always that clean cut, especially since lake-effect on the Tug Hill Plateau is strongly dependent on wind direction, but it does often work out that way. Case in point is the forecast for Friday.  As shown in the dynamic tropopause (jet level) analysis below, Utah and the western U.S. are under the influence of a very high amplitude upper level ridge.  It is not yet time for western U.S. water resource managers to panic, but if this pattern continues to persist, the runoff this spring...

If I hear polar vortex one more time, I'm going to snap!  If you want to know what this Polar Vortex stuff is all about and why the press has gone over the deep end, check out The Polar Vortex: Myth and Reality at The Cliff Mass Blog.

We've had some downtime here in upstate NY and are using the time to analyze some of the data we've collected in the last several weeks over the Tug Hill Plateau.  I wanted to share a very interesting graph that shows the dramatic impact that the Tug Hill Plateau has on winter storms and the love–hate relationship that Mother Nature has with snowpacks in the eastern U.S. The graph shows the total snow depth at two sites.  The first is Sandy Creek (elevation 475 feet) at the foot of the Tug Hill Plateau.  The second is North Redfield (elevation 1275 feet) on the western slope of the Tug Hill Plateau.  These are the middle two sites in the image below. These sites may be only 800 feet difference in elevation, but the contrast in storm intensity and snowpack is enormous and impressive even for a hardened mountain weather scientist and powder snob like myself. Note first the dramatic increase in snow depth during nearly all winter storms, which I have identifi...

Unfortunately it is warm and pouring rain on the Tug Hill Plateau today and we're watching the snow disappear before our eyes. Yesterday, however, was a great day as we visited Pulaski High School and brought our friends from the Center for Severe Weather Research with us with their Doppler on Wheels (DOW).   Courtesy Jamie Hefti/Pulaski High School If you think teenagers don't think science is cool, drive this beastie into their parking lot sometime and you will see their eyes light up.  Especially when they go inside. Sometimes you get lucky with visits like this.  If you want to take a bunch of kids outside to learn about snow crystals, it's best if it is snowing very lightly so that it is manageable.  That's what we found when we arrived, plus we learned that they had a bunch of small magnifying glasses in the classroom, so we did some crystal identification and some exercises in snow water content (a.k.a., density). Courtesy Jamie Hefti/...

Looks like about 18 new at Alta since yesterday morning.  Great news for Wasatch skiers as we've needed the snow and people have been getting ornery for powder. Source: MesoWest Meanwhile here on the Tug Hill Plateau today looks like the last day with cold powder.  A major rain event is on tap for Saturday.  If you are in the area on Saturday and are looking for something to do, you might consider coming to my talk on lake effect, snow, and the OWLeS field program at 10 am at the Barnes Corners United Methodist Church.  A $5 donation is requested.  Click here for more information. Come and hear about lake-effect storms, snow, and our adventures on the Tug Hill Plateau tomorrow morning in Barnes Corners, NY .