Wasatch Weather Weenies

Many skiers are likely well aware that the Ikon pass has been going off the past week or two with the addition of more ski areas not just in Utah (Brighton, Solitude), but other parts of the U.S. and world.  Today comes the announcement of the addition of Niseko United, bringing the power paradise of Hokkaido into the fold. MORE BREAKING NEWS FROM ⁦ @IkonPass ⁩ !!! https://t.co/AlzaQb47lw — UnofficialNetworks (@UnofficialNet) August 30, 2018 I'll be spending most of my winter in the Austrian Alps so I won't be partaking, but let's think about how this cold war could truly escalate beyond gobbling up ski areas.  How about summer tram/gondola/chairlift access, partnerships with climbing gyms, and access to museums and tourist attractions.  There are examples of such passes in Europe (e.g., Freizeit Ticket Tirol). Add your ideas, serious, humorous, or sarcastic to the comments below....

Yesterday was perfect for doing anything, such as an evening ride on the BST Hands down, yesterday was the most pleasant day in Salt Lake City since June.   On June 30th, the high was 77 degrees.  We didn't have a day with a high temperature in the 70s again until Monday, when we reached a high of 77.  However, the air remained smoky. Yesterday, the air cleared and we enjoyed spectacularly comfortable minimum and maximum temperatures of 51 and 76 degrees.   Perfect for whatever summer outdoor activities you enjoy and it was well deserved after a hot and smoky summer.  

California's Fourth Climate Change Assessment was released yesterday and contains some sobering findings for the future of snow and skiing in the Sierra Nevada.  The assessment can be accessed at www.climateassessment.ca.gov , with the regional report for the Sierra Nevada available at  http://www.climateassessment.ca.gov/regions/docs/20180827-SierraNevada.pdf . California is perhaps one of the more climate-vulnerable regions of the contiguous U.S. and is already feeling the effects of global warming.  On the other hand, it has incredible expertise to draw from, with the regional report from the Sierra Nevada seeing contributions from manny oustanding scientists, led by Mike Dettinger of the USGS. Some key points from report on the Sierra Nevada: Climate change is already underway Recent/ongoing trends foreshadow changes to come By the end of the 21st century, temperatures are projected to warm 6-9˚F Future precipitation is expected to be within ±15% of cu...

Summer is bad and getting worse.  This year was no exception, with the summer so far (1 June - 26 August) rating as the 6th warmest such period on record at the Salt Lake City International Airport with an average temperature of 78.9˚F. Source: NOAA Regional Climate Centers Throw in a lack of precipitation (0.74" thusfar, 15th driest since 1874) and persistent smoke, and we can all be grateful that the end of August is nigh and that signs are apparent of a change in season.  We begin in the Alps, where severe-weather.eu reports up to 35 cm of snow this morning.  That's right, 35 cm!  That's nearly 14 inches for the metrically challenged.  Doesn't everything sound deeper in metric?  The video below is from the Rifugio Bioche Hut in Alta Badia (2079 meters) in northern Italy.   Looks like 25 cm by their ruler.  Guessing the sun chairs won't see much traffic today.  Meanwhile in the states, a cold upper-level trough...

Yesterday evening was simply gorgeous, with clear skies and clean air.  I went to bed hoping to awake again to clean air, but alas, it wasn't to be, although I discovered that for once this summer, the mountains offered an escape.  I opted for a quick early ascent of Snowbird so I could return to the valley and get some work done.  Although the valley is smoky, Snowbird was clean as a whistle, at least when I summited around 10 AM.  In contrast, smoke fills the valley.  If you look carefully at the photo below, taken around 10:35 or so, you can see that the smoke is a bit shallow and doesn't appear to mountaintop level.  What appears to have happened overnight is that there was a weak shift in the wind, with some surface stations exhibiting northwesterly flow that could transport smoke southward into the valley from the north.  Hat Island, for example, saw a shift to northerly flow (wind direction blue dots below) just before midnight, whic...

Some impressive rainfall totals have been produced by Lane on the Big Island of Hawaii over the past 2-3 days and it's worth doing a quick comparison and contrast with the climatological rainfall as this is relevant for understanding flooding. Owing to the quasi-persistent northeasterly trade winds, the eastern slopes of the Big Island, especially those to the west and northwest of Hilo, are very wet, with a maximum of over 8000 mm (300 inches).  Source: Department of Geography, University of Hawaii at Mãnoa Note, however, that that maximum is not on the high-altitude slopes of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa, but instead on the lower slopes.  In fact, the maximum lies at altitudes between 2000 and 4000 feet above sea level.  This is a bit surprising for those of us in the western U.S. who typically expect precipitation to increase with elevation, but it is a consequence of several factors including the persistent trade-wind inversion, which frequently limits the vertical ...

Strong and severe thunderstorms made for an exciting day and evening yesterday. I was most impressed with the reports (and photos) of hail in Farmington, Kaysville, Layton.  Photos on twitter were impressive. Hail size verified! 2” hail in Kaysville. Protect your cars with these severe thunderstorms! #utwx @KUTV2News pic.twitter.com/hfbzKXK3D7 — Chase Thomason (@ChaseThomason) August 22, 2018 Hail of that size can be damaging, and left some dents in cars in the area. Aftermath of hailstorm on freeway in Davis Co., my car is riddled in dent marks. How does this even get fixed!? #utwx #weather pic.twitter.com/1BkaJJkllv — Jen Hicks (@Jebbowie) August 22, 2018 Severe hail with a diameter of 0.75 inches or greater is relatively rare in our part of the U.S. and most common in the high plains.  Source: Cintineo et al. (2012) Nationwide on an annual basis, hail does more than $1 billion in damages to crops and property, including cars.  In Colorado, damag...

The Hawaiian Islands are blessed in many ways and from a meteorological perspective, they are fortunate to sit in the central Pacific where the frequency of tropical cyclones (e.g., hurricanes, typhoons) is relatively low compared to that found in the eastern and western Pacific.  Historical tropical cyclone tracks (Source: https://coast.noaa.gov/hurricanes/) One reason for this is that the sea surface temperatures in the central Pacific are climatologically lower than those found at similar latitudes in the tropical eastern and western Pacific Ocean.  Hawaii also benefits from a protrusion of cooler sea surface temperatures to its east and south which, combined with climatological atmospheric circulations, often steers tropical cyclones to the south.   Source: Climate Prediction Center There are, however, exceptions.  The images below illustrate the tropical storms and hurricanes passing within 200 (top) and 75 miles (bottom) of the Hawaiian I...

It has been about a 30 year dream of mine to backpack the Teton Crest Trail and with a little help from a willing back and a friendly Grand Teton National Park climbing ranger, we were able to do it this past week.  The seeds for the trip were planted when I was a teenager and my family made our first visit to Grand Teton National Park.  I remember riding the boat across Jenny Lake with a group of college-age backpackers and thinking I want to be them some day.  After graduating college, I drove across the country and spent several days in Jackson in late May 1989.  I was 22 years old, short on experience, but long on exuberance.  Or perhaps what Allen Greenspan would call irrational exuberance.  I walked into Teton Mountaineering when I arrived for some beta and someone sold me an ice axe, told me to learn how to use it, and said good luck.  Said ice axe is in the photo below, taken in the North Fork of Cascade Canyon, May 1989. The n...

Over the past few days I've travelled to and from Tempe, Arizona where we dropped my daughter off for her freshman year at Arizona State. It was a pretty exciting period meteorologically.  The first night, we experienced 60+ mph outflow winds from thunderstorms approaching Phoenix from the Mogollon Rim to the northeast, which then provided a great lightning show.  The next night, incredibly, I slept through 3+ inches of rain that fell in Tempe in a huge deluge. My daughter texted me late yesterday saying they had just had a haboob, that the power was out, and she was holed up somewhere on campus until the storm passed.  A haboob is a dust storm that is frequently initiated by the outflow from thunderstorms and typically found in desert regions of the world. For yesterday's haboob in Phoenix, a quick look around YouTube unearthed the video below that is available here and I hope is accurate for the date and time.  Note in particular the deep convection on the r...