Thursday, October 10, 2024

Possible Snow?

I've been watching the new Utah Snow Ensemble looking for both bugs in the code and a pattern change.  I did find one bug (you probably didn't notice its effects) that has been corrected and now I'm seeing the possibility of a pattern change.  

As illustrated by the plume diagram for Alta-Collins below, the central Wasatch are locked into dry weather through 00000 UTC 14 October (6 PM MDT Sunday).  


Then, a weak trough drifts across northern Utah.  A few ensemble members bring some showers in either on the 14th, 15th, or 16th, but most keep us dry and it remains mild.  Not much to get excited about there.  

However, after 0000 UTC 17 October (6 PM MDT next Wednesday), we start to see the possibility of a shift.  The median wet-bulb temperatures drop to below 7000 feet and the many of the ensemble members produce precipitation and snow.  The forecasts though produce a wide range of precipitation and snow totals.  Additionally, while most of the ensembles cool us off (note how the median wet-bulb 0.5 levels drop), a few still keep us mild.

We will see how this plays out in the coming days.  

2 comments:

  1. When I go to https://weather.utah.edu/index.php?runcode=2024100300&t=ensgefsds&d=PL&r=CLN , I only see out to Oct 13. How do we view the extended forecast to the 20th?

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  2. It looks like you bookmarked to always go to the run from 2024100300. Take that out of your link:

    https://weather.utah.edu/index.php?t=ensgefsds&d=PL&r=CLN

    Then it will always pull up the most recently available run on our system.

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