Avenues Snow Bomb

There aren't many days when the Avenues get the bragging rights for snowfall, but today is one of them.  

During the day yesterday, a frontal boundary developed over northern Utah, with the band especially strong along the I-80 corridor from the area near Stansbury Island to the Salt Lake City International Airport and the lower avenues.  Below is the radar imagery for 02:42 UTC (7:42 PM MST) illustrating the situation.  

Source: NCAR/RAL

A sounding collected at the airport at just before 0000 UTC (5 PM) showed shallow northerly flow associated with the front below about 725 mb, with southeasterly flow aloft.  

Source: SPC

Additionally, the sounding was very moist at low levels and near what meteorologists call moist neutral, meaning that the stability was weak to non-existent or even weakly unstable for moist flows (i.e., with a relative humidity of 100%).  Thunder was even reported in some parts of the Salt Lake Valley that afternoon.  

At about 6:30 we were getting takeout on 400 South where it was starting to rain hard with a little bit of melting snow at times.  We drove through the melting layer when we returned to our home at about 5000 ft elevation.  From that point on it was game on for the next 3.5 hours with heavy snowfall.  I took the photo below at 7:47 PM when perhaps two inches had accumulated.  

By 9:30 several inches had fallen.  A plow had finally gone up Virginia to 11th Avenue and I opted to drive my son and his girlfriend home near the U of U campus.  The drive was sporting, although the snow was deep enough that on the unplowed roads in the upper avenues braking wasn't a problem.  Just take your foot off the gas and let the car auger in.  

I got home at about 10 and made an unofficial measurement of about 10 inches on our front lawn.

We have an automated snow-depth sensor at the mouth of Red Butte Canyon on the University of Utah campus.  Snow depth increased 4.3" from 9–10 PM MST and 7.7" from 8-10 PM.  

Source: MesoWest

Those are impressive snowfall rates!

Meanwhile, in the central Wasatch, the Utah Avalanche Center reported 6.5" along the Park City Ridgeline, 8" in Big Cottonwood, and 6" in Little Cottonwood overnight.  What can I say?  Mother Nature isn't giving much love to our mountains this year.  

Snowfall totals through 10 AM this morning reported to the National Weather Service maxed at 14" in Salt Lake City (5088 ft) and the upper avenues (5000 ft).  I'm not sure where that Salt Lake City site is.  It could be in the avenues or the east bench above Foothill, but I'm going to say that Avenues were the big winners in this one.  Take that Alta!  Given that my ankle is still not allowing me to ski powder, the storm was greatly appreciated.