What an unbelievable season. It just keeps coming. McKenzie Skiles, a snow hydrologist here at the University of Utah, tweeted the photos below taken by Otto Lang of the Atwater snow study site above the Town of Alta. Multiple groups have instruments on the platform, including a profiling radar from my group (that's the dish). What a snowpack!
Snow has reached the platform at Atwater Study Plot in Alta, UT! Snow HydRO Lab grad students for height reference.
— Dr. McKenzie Skiles (@UTSnowHydro) March 24, 2023
Snow HydRO Lab Phd Otto Lang grabbed this pic yesterday & it's still snowing hard! pic.twitter.com/QaDZhFTDlL
I attempted to ski tour this morning, but really, the snow was too deep for the hill we were on. The pictures looked good though.
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| Photo: Michael Wasserstein |
It snowed hard for the entire 3500 vertical foot climb and I arrived at the top as a frozen wet sponge. I'm still shivering! It's late March and the snow was cold and in pretty good condition even at low elevations. Melt-freeze crusts? Perhaps buried, but not really an issue. Did I say it was late March? What a season.
We exited Mill Creek into the wall of snow associated with a strong snow squall. Visibility less than a quarter of a mile and rapidly deteriorating road condition.
Every day I look at the models and wonder when this will end. I don't know. Here's the latest downscaled NAEFS for Alta. A mean of more than 3" of water for the next week.
Our radar is in "Deep" trouble.
Absolutely amazing! As I did in 2010-11, I spent some time trying to get to the "bottom" of Utah's all-time record snowfall. Different answers depending on where you look, but according to the Western Regional Climate Center, Alta's (and the state's) seasonal record is 849.5 inches in the winter of 1982-83. As of yesterday, the same Alta station (I'm assuming Alta Guard?) is at 581.2 which isn't even close, although it could definitely hit ~700 by the end of the year. Comparing the water content also bears this out with ~51 inches accumulated in the snowpack this year compared to ~56 at the same point (March 23) in 1983. BTW water content later in late May of 1983 probably peaked at around 80 inches at the Guard station!
ReplyDeleteThe surprising thing is that Alta Ski Resort is rapidly closing in on the record "snowiest season" which they, for obvious reasons, define as October- April. The resort is currently at 737 inches during that time frame while the record is 748 in 1981-82. The big years in the early 80's had significant September, May and even June snowfall which helped push them to 800 and above.
Obviously some of these aren't apples to apples comparisons, but even so it appears to me that other years in the relatively recent history might have been snowier and were definitely wetter. Will Alta challenge some of these records? Maybe someone with better info on the various weather stations and more knowledge can help out? Or maybe another post on what the record snowfall actually is like you did in 2011 would be helpful?
Regardless, from an excited, snow-loving colorado reader who is also getting close to if not record snowfall, thank you!
All observations have uncertainties, and snowfall is especially uncertain. Snowfall records are fun to track, but they are point measurements and hard to take. Old records might have been taken every 24-hours. New every 12. Sites move. A lot of this is undocumented and unknown.
DeleteToday, snowfall measurements are taken at 3 sites at Alta. Alta-Guard (by UDOT), Alta-Collins (by Alta Ski Patrol), and at Our Lady of the Snows (by the Town of Alta). The latter is the "COOP" data or what would be on the Western Region Climate Center site. I would need to comb through and have a look to see if that site may have been elsewhere in the past.
UDOT used to take its snowfall measurements at the Atwater site. They moved it to closer to the Guard station several years ago. This could have an impact on the measurements. Measurement location and frequency can make a big difference.
I haven't dug into this in a while, but it is a bit of a black hole. I don't really find it to be that important. I am comfortable with the view that measurements have uncertainties and that while the absolute number gets everyones attention, in reality there are decent sized error bars on these measurements.
Wait, Alta UDOT and Alta Guard are the same site? They show up as different sites with different obs on all of the NWS PNSs.
DeleteI don't know for sure what the NWS does for their PNS's, but UDOT operates an automated station called "Alta-Guard" that provides automated snow depth measurements. UDOT also collects manual snow depth/water equivalent measurements every 12 hours. I suspect one is the former and the other is the latter.
DeleteThe NWS COOP data is taken by Alta Central at our building not OLS.
DeleteThanks for correcting that. I should have said above OLS. I assume that is where it is?
DeleteYes, at the long brown building behind the Shaft. I thought people might think you were referring to the Alta Guard site directly west of OLS.
DeleteJim, you need to figure out why this season happened and tell us what we can do to make it keep happening :) Holy S**t!
ReplyDeleteThe Governor of Utah asked everyone to pray for water from the skies. You're welcome.
DeleteI'll be praying. In all seriousness, curious to know if there was a large scale weather pattern responsible, or was it a 20 consecutive heads on 20 consecutive coin flips kind of thing. Hope you do a post mortem.
DeleteThe short answer is that I don't know. It's a hard post to write and I need to do some digging.
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