This Storm Could Be a Turkey

Ah, it's a beautiful morning in Salt Lake.  The sun is shining.  Temperatures are around 50ºF.  Gorgeous.

The loop below shows very nicely the situation that has proven to be the bane of forecasters for so long.  As mentioned in earlier posts on this event, we have a situation of large-scale Rossby-wave breaking, with the upper-level trough forming rapidly over the Pacific States overnight last night.

All the action right now is to our north and west, although it's less impressive than I hoped it would be prior to moving into the Wasatch Front (thinking from a skier's perspective here, not a commuter's).  Each successive model run slows the system down a bit more and that continued to be the case through this morning.  Here's yesterday's NAM time-height for Salt Lake City showing frontal passage around 2100 UTC (2 PM MST) this afternoon, as well as a slug moisture in the pre-frontal southerly flow for this morning and the early afternoon.

Now here's today's.  Frontal passage is after 0000 UTC (5 PM MST) and the prefrontal environment is much drier.

Snow will eventually kick in later this afternoon over the mountains, but totals by tomorrow morning are going to perhaps only be in the 3-6 inch range in the upper Cottonwoods.  I haven't been putting any numbers on this event over the past few days as it seemed so hopelessly unpredictable, as we have discussed at length in early posts, so there's always the hope that I'm overly pessimistic, but I doubt it.  Right now, I think we'll escape the evening rush hour along the Wasatch Front without major weather problems, but keep an eye on things just in case.