We Need Snow

The weekend snowstorm and powderfest notwithstanding, the snowpack situation in northern Utah remains dire and it is important that you all continue to provide sacrifices to Pagan gods so that the situation improves.  Human sacrifice not recommended, but please consider other legal options.

Alta ski area's web site reported totals through Sunday morning of 22".  The hourly interval stake observations from Alta-Collins indicated 19".  In either event, it was a good storm.  Several of my colleagues at the University of Utah in Mechanical Engineering and Atmospheric Sciences are testing out a new measurement system at Alta-Collins that provides very high-frequency measurements of snow density (expressed below as water content).  Below is what they found with the first couple of inches varying around 10% and then the next several inches varying around 8-9%, before some larger fluctuations for the last couple of inches.   

Source: https://my.mech.utah.edu/~pardyjak/DEID.php

That's actually a pretty consistent snowfall.  We see larger variations in many storms around here. 

I'm sure it helped the skiing a great deal (I avoided the powder panic and went skate skiing).  However, the Alta-Collins snow depth sits this morning at 57", below my 60" threshold for "good early season conditions" despite it being late January.  NRCS SNOTEL data shows that sites like Thaynes Canyon above Park City are still at the lowest snowpack water equivalent in the past 30 years.  

Source: NRCS

Thus, we are still "yo-yoing off the back." 

The week ahead is best summarized by lifting some lyrics from Stealers Wheel lyrics:

Clowns to the left of me

Jokers to the Right

Here I am

Stuck in the Middle with You

And that looks to be precisely where we will be this week with BIG storms to the west of us, BIG storms to the south, and BIG storms to the north, as indicated by the NAEFS downscaled snowfall product through 0000 UTC 1 February.  

However, it probably won't be a shutout as there are enough bits and scraps coming through to give us some snow and if we're lucky, one or more of the storms will come close enough to give us a bit more.

The forecast plume for Alta-Collins gives us some dribs or drabs through the 27th, but then picks things up.  The mean 7-day storm total is actually a fairly healthy 30 inches, although the spread is large. A lack of clustering around any one event is indicative of the bits and scraps and differences in their timing and intensity.  

I think that 30" is optimistic and perhaps on the upper end of what I would go for for the period.  Still let's hope we get something.  I don't want to have to resort to human sacrifice.