Good News for Skiers and Water Managers

A spectacular early March weekend is now in the books.  For skiers and water managers, March is an important month.  The spigot can stay open, extending the powder season while there is a deep snowpack and delaying the spring runoff (often leading to a more efficient runoff), or we can transition to spring conditions with the snowpack suffering a slow death.  

If you are a skier or a water manager, I think you will like the extended forecasts.  For the early part of this week we'll have our share of warmth, sunshine, and spring fever, but the models are calling for a major shift later this week to a more active pattern with a parade of troughs moving across the western United States thereafter.  

It's a long-enough range forecast that I don't want to talk about details, so I'll summarize with the Utah Snow Ensemble plume for Alta. It's flatlined for water equivalent and snow until late on the 13th when thigns really start to pick up.  There are some big numbers thereafter.  The driest member pumps out 1.63" of wter and 23" of snow through 0000 UTC 20 March (6 PM MDT 19 March), which is more than what we would expect over a 6 day period based on climatology (or average).  

Most of the members are between 2.25 and 4.5 inches of water and 30 and 60 inches of snow.  That would be an impressive storm cycle for mid-to-late March.  There will be breaks in the action over that stretch, so don't assume it will snow continuously, but right now it looks like a series of storms will bring the goods.