WYSIWYG Forecast

 The forecast for the next 10 days is pretty depressing and discouraging.  I'll call it a WYSIWYG forecast (What You See Is What You Get).  

As far as the large scale is concerned, there's little change from what we've experienced over the past three weeks.  Ridging off or near the Pacific coast with short-wave troughs rolling over the ridge and diving into Utah.  These troughs bring in some cold air and can partially or fully mix out the air pollution, but are moisture starved, dropping some flurries or an inch or two of snow. 

I'll summarize the situation with the 10-day accumulated precipitation through 0000 UTC 9 February (5 PM MST Tuesday 8 February) from the ECMWF high-res model and the GFS.  The ECMWF puts down a spec of 0.10" of water equivalent for the upper elevations of the central Wasatch for the entire 10-day period. 

The GFS even less.

If we're lucky, perhaps one of the troughs can generate a bit more than predicted by these models, but for the most part, it's looking pretty grim.  This time of year, average precipitation would be more than 2 inches of water equivalent ever 10 days in the upper elevations of the central Wasatch.  

I haven't skied in a couple of weeks due to a nagging ankle injury.  I guess my timing was good for that, although the conversion to couch-potato status is almost complete. 

Also, for those who like to ask about these things, the odds of "Steenburgh Winter" appear to be decreasing with every model run.  If you had asked me during the holidays, I would have likely said it's looking good.  Indeed we reached 97 inches at Alta Collins on December 31st and again on January 6, but have since settled back to 84 inches.  It's a dense 84 inches, but it's not 100.   The Steenburgh Winter equivalent in metric would be 2.5 meters, which would require 99 inches.  Even there we fail!