These Park City Temperature Observations Are Amazing

It was a very cold morning on the Wasatch Back.  How about a -24ºF at Kimball Junction, a -13ºF at the base of Park City, and a -17ºF in Thaynes Canyon

24-hour minimum temperatures for period ending at 1636 UTC 31 December 2014. Source: MesoWest.

I did an interview with PCTV this morning and had quite an experience driving over Parley's Canyon just before sunrise, very near the time of minimum temperatures above.  The "always trustworthy" car thermometer showed a temperature fall of about 12ºF from Parleys Summit to the base of the Canyons as I decended into the cold pool resident within Snyderville Basin.

What was most amazing were the variations in temperature at Park City Mountain Resort.  All of the observations in the plot below were collected at 1615 UTC (0915 AM MST).  At that time, skiing down the King Con trail from the top of the King Con chair to the bottom of Silverlode involved a temperature change of 28ºF from 14ºF at the top to -14ºF at the bottom!

Source: Mesowest.

I don't know how many people were on the mountain to experience that sort of insanity, but it must have been a breathtaking run.