A Quiet April So Far

In a post last week I commented that it had been a dry April so far.  We got a bit of rain with the trough I discussed in that post but for the most part this April has not only been dry but quiet.  April is sometimes a month with strong cold fronts and big temperature swings.  My view is that this one has been rather ho-hum without a lot of fireworks. Temperature swings have been modest and rainfall somewhat scant.

Rainfall through yesterday for the month at the Salt Lake City International Airport was only 0.44 inches.  Data from the National Weather Service shows that much of Utah is below average for precipitation over the past 30 days.

A weak system moving through will bring some clouds and a chance of showers to northern Utah over the through Thursday, but accumulations look to be unimpressive.  There is a deeper trough approaching for Sunday and Monday.  Keep your fingers crossed it delivers some rain as we could use it.  

More Proposed NOAA Budget Cuts

The Trump Administration 2026 budget passback plan would be catastrophically bad for weather prediction in the United States.  

Below is a transcript of the letter that I sent to Utah Senator John Curtis and Representative Blake Moore concerning these potential cuts.  If you agree (or even if you disagree and want to share an alternative opinion), please consider writing your legislative leaders.   

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I am a Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Utah who has worked for 30 years to improve weather prediction in Utah.  I lead research to improve the understanding and prediction of winter storms in Utah’s mountains and develop methods to improve snowfall forecasting across the continental United States using artificial intelligence. The forecast techniques my group has developed are used by the National Weather Service and private companies.  I am also proud to have served as the graduate advisor for several Air Force officers who are contributing to weather support for our Nation’s defense.  I write today as a private citizen.  The views expressed in this letter are mine and independent from the University of Utah.  

The Trump Administration’s 2026 budget passback plan would be catastrophic for the future of weather prediction in the United States, reducing our ability to anticipate, prepare, and respond to high-impact weather including winter storm, severe thunderstorm, and wildfire hazards that affect Utah.  It would gut the NOAA Oceanic and Atmospheric Research Office, 10 NOAA Research Laboratories, and 16 Cooperative Institutes, essentially eliminating nearly all of the critical research done by NOAA.  

We are already seeing the impacts of the Trump Administration on the National Weather Service and the broader US Weather Enterprise.  National Weather Service offices, due to staffing cutbacks, are reducing overnight staffing at forecast offices, decreasing the frequency of weather discussions for fire weather and spot forecasts, lowering the frequency of weather discussions for aviation forecasts, and making decisions for critical some watch/warning/advisory products only on day shifts (see, for example, https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25899644-changes-coming-to-nws-sacramento-products-services/). 

The 2026 budget passback plan, however, would not only further degrade National Weather Service forecasts and decision support services during critical high-impact weather events, but halt ongoing research to advance satellite, radar, and other observing systems; create next generation computer forecast systems; and expand the use of artificial intelligence for weather watches and warnings.  These cuts will have significant impacts on future weather prediction in Utah, which given our climate and complex terrain is highly variable and stands to benefit greatly from advances in the areas above.  Let me give three examples: 

• Winter storm forecasting.  Utah’s complicated geography, topography, and water features such as the Great Salt Lake produce extremely localized snowstorms that are not well forecast by current National Weather Service forecast modeling systems.  In other countries with complex terrain, such as the Alpine nations of Switzerland, France, and Austria, computer models are being run at much higher resolution to account for terrain effects. There is tremendous potential for improved forecasts for Utah if NOAA can continue its computer model development efforts.

• Coupled atmosphere-fire modeling.  Currently, there is no operational capability to simulate and forecast the interactions between wildfires, vegetation, and the atmosphere that cause wildfire blowups and severe wildfire behavior.  Ongoing research is building modeling systems capable of doing this and advancing our ability to better anticipate wildfire spread in the future.

• Seasonal water-resource prediction.  Long-lead-time forecasts of temperature, precipitation, and mountain snowpack are vital for anticipating the spring runoff.  Future advances in our understanding and prediction of year-to-year variations in snowfall and spring snowmelt dynamics will enable our water managers and agricultural communities to make better decisions.

Recently, the American Meteorological Society and National Weather Association, which represent all of these sectors, released a statement summarizing the implications of these cuts (https://blog.ametsoc.org/tag/ams-statement/).  It summarizes well the importance of NOAA for the Nation: 

“Without NOAA research, National Weather Service (NWS) weather models and products will stagnate, observational data collection will be reduced, public outreach will decrease, undergraduate and graduate student support will drop, and NOAA funding for universities will plummet. In effect, the scientific backbone and workforce needed to keep weather forecasts, alerts, and warnings accurate and effective will be drastically undercut, with unknown — yet almost certainly disastrous — consequences for public safety and economic health.”

I ask that you evaluate the proposed cuts, their impacts on the protection of lives and property in the State of Utah, and the potential benefits that will be lost if these cuts are enacted.  NOAA research is an investment that greatly benefits Utah and the Nation.

Thank you for your consideration.

Sincerely,

Dr. Jim Steenburgh

Why Small Majors Are Important at a University

Whether it be the federal government, the state government, or the University of Utah, there is a lot of talk these days about "efficiency."  Google AI defines efficiency as "how well resources are used to produce desired outputs, often measured by the ratio of outputs to inputs."  

One of the bills passed this last state legislative session, HB 265: Higher Education Strategic Reinvestment, requires a reallocation of $20 million to the University of Utah's base budget to move support from inefficient operations and programs to efficient ones.  Specifically, the U is to "develop a strategic reinvestment plan that:

(i) identifies programs, courses, degrees, departments, colleges, or other divisions of the institution, operational efficiencies, and other components of the institution's instruction and administrative functions, including dean positions and other administration positions, that merit further investment;

(ii) identifies programs, courses, degrees, departments, colleges or other divisions of the institution, operational inefficiencies, and other components of the institution's instruction and administrative functions, including dean positions and other administration positions, that the institution will reduce or eliminate to shift resources, in an amount at least equal to the amount of reinvestment funds dedicated to the institution."

The U must submit of a draft of their plan to the Utah System of Higher Education (USHE) in May.  

Recently, the University of Utah was told by leaders of USHE to look at cutting majors with fewer than 40 graduates per year.  The Salt Lake Tribune article in that link stated that U Provost Mitzy Montoya "bristled at the number, which she said feels arbitrary."  I'd like to take a deeper diver here into some of the reasons why the number of graduates in a major can be a poor metric to use in isolation and why small majors are important to a University. 

Some of these are noted in the article, including the fact that a program may be smaller but growing, but there are others.

In some cases, a department or departments may offer multiple majors.  There may be small enrollment in one of those majors, but the costs of offering may be relatively low since most of the classes needed for it are offered anyway.  This is the case for the recently developed Earth and Environmental Science major, which is not housed in a department but instead spans multiple departments and largely builds on the existing curriculum in Atmospheric Sciences, Geology and Geophysics, and Biology.  This is also a new major and growing fast (I suspect it is now well over 40 majors). 

In other cases, the major may be small, but vital to society.  Mining Engineering is such an example. This is a specialized engineering discipline that is important to the State of Utah.  The department is small, but graduates have high salaries and a high employment rate.  And they are needed.  

A department might also have a small number of majors, but teach high-demand classes.  In my area, Atmospheric Sciences, we graduate a relatively small number of students each year, but also offer some of the largest enrolled physical sciences classes on campus.  I have more than 500 students in my class this semester.  It's online and "very efficient," although students also tell me they love it and learn a lot!  We also offer higher-level classes in climate, environmental programing, environmental statistics, and other areas that are required or needed by students in other majors.  It takes a village and specialty disciplines are often essential for student education.  

Then there are small departments on campus that are very innovative and successful in research and innovation.  This includes my department, but also departments like Metallurgical Engineering and Pharmacology/Toxicology.  These departments have the highest ratios of research funding per faculty member on campus, with external funding that greatly exceeds their state budgets.  

I've focused above on science and engineering, which reflects my experience on campus, but there are also strong arguments for keeping smaller departments in the humanities and other areas.  

Increasing efficiency by reducing waste is important.  However, it should not be evaluated based solely on the number of graduates.  The real goal for a University and its various units isn't efficiency but value, for its students and society, with value here being broadly defined to include non-monetary benefits and impacts.  Just read the University of Utah's mission statement:

"The University of Utah drives unsurpassed societal impact by preparing students from diverse backgrounds to be leaders and global citizens who strengthen our society and democracy; generating and sharing new knowledge, discoveries and innovations that supercharge our economy and improve lives locally, nationally and globally; and engaging local, national and global communities to promote education, health and quality of life."

Those intangibles matter and we need to be cautious about using metrics that don't adequately measure them.  

Joint AMS/NWS Statement on NOAA Research Cuts

"The scientific backbone and workforce needed to keep weather forecasts, alerts, and warnings accurate and effective will be drastically undercut, with unknown — yet almost certainly disastrous — consequences for public safety and economic health."

See the full statement: https://www.ametsoc.org/ams/about-ams/ams-statements/statements-of-the-ams-in-force/stand-up-for-noaa-research-the-time-to-act-is-now/ 

Where Are the April Showers?

It's been a dry start to April with only 0.16" of precipitation at the Salt Lake City International Airport, 0.15" of which fell on April 1st.  We won't see precipitation today, so that will be the tally through the half-way point of April, which will tie it for the 9th driest first half of April on record.  If you are wondering, there are five Aprils in which we had no measurable precipitation in the first half of the month, most recently in 1992.  

The April Fools storm was a bigger producer in the Avenues Foothills than the airport, but my full-sun gardens are now starting to dry out.  We could use some April showers soon.  

The likelihood of valley precipitation will finally be on the increase late Wednesday into Thursday as an upper-level trough digs into Utah from the Pacific Northwest.  The GFS shows the trough over central Idaho at 1200 UTC 17 April (6 AM Thursday) with some showers across northern Utah with the accompanying cold front. 

Right now this doesn't look like a supersoaker, except if maybe you are lucky enough to be one blessed with a more intense shower or thunderstorm, but it will cool things down and give us some showers.  We'll call it beneficial rains for the valley (maybe even mixed with some flakes for the benches on Thursday and Friday) and a return of mountain snow.  

Given the unsettled nature of this spring pattern, the spread for water equivalent and snowfall in the Utah Snow Ensemble for Alta is enormous and about as big as I've seen all winter.  

Odds are probably best on Thursday.  After that, it will probably come in fits and starts if it keeps coming.  The dendrites will have a real battle with daytime heating.  Good skiing will probably require high end accumulations and getting on it right away.

Mainly Dry Cold Front

Pickin's are slim this week for weather entertainment, although I'm hoping you are getting out for some time in the sun.

On tap for tomorrow is the passage of what looks to be a mainly dry cold front, which is due to arrive tomorrow morning.  The overnight GFS forecast shows the front at 700-mb (10,000 ft or crest level) pretty much right over northern Utah at 1500 UTC 12 April (0900 MDT Saturday).   

By 0000 UTC 13 April (1800 MDT Saturday), the flow has finally come around to west-northwesterly and 700-mb temperatures have dropped to about +4C over the Salt Lake Valley from +9C today.  So tomorrow will be cooler, but still mild, with valley highs in the low 70s and 9500 foot highs in the mid to high 40s. 

Sunday the 700-mb temps will be down even lower and our machine-learned forecast for Little Cottonwood is calling for temps at Alta-Collins  and on Mt. Baldy to be near or just above 20°F.  

Thus, although there may be some clouds around, it looks like we may get a pretty good hard freeze Saturday night. Given the lack of snow, I'm expecting coral reef conditions on Sunday morning.  Patience and playing solar aspects right will be the key to finding corn. 

For now, there's nothing major on the horizon.  We may go deeper into April without a big storm since the April Fools Powder Surprise.  On upper-elevation north aspects in the central Wasatch, peak snowpack water equivalent is often in late April.  I'm starting to wonder if that will be the case this year.  

Dry Post April Fools

April got off to a good start with the April Fool's storm, but since then, it's been dry.  That dry streak looks to continue through the work week with all members of the Utah Snow Ensemble flatlined for Alta-Collins until 1200 UTC 12 April (6 AM MDT Saturday).  

A few members are excited about snow on Saturday night and Sunday, but most are producing snowfall amounts in the low single digits.  The reason for this is a compact upper-level trough expected to move across the northern Rockies over the weekend.  At 1800 UTC 13 April (Noon MDT Sunday), it's centered over Montana in the latest GFS forecast. 

The trough is fairly dry on its south side, so most of the model runs are giving us a good hard freeze but not a lot of snow.  Basically a good recipe for bone-rattling coral reef conditions, perhaps with a skiff of snow on top on Sunday.  Sounds bad.

If the trough can dig more than currently advertised by most of the members, perhaps we can do better.  About 10% of the ensemble members produce 10" or more by 6 PM Sunday.  Those odds are long, so yardwork is looking like a good option unless things change.

It's Better to be Lucky than Good

Yesterday was one of those days when if you were skiing at Alta in the afternoon, consider yourself blessed or, alternatively, it's better to be lucky than good. 

From 1100 to 1600 MDT, Alta-Collins picked up 9" of fresh, including 3" in an hour from 1200 to 1300 and then again from 1400 to 1500.  Water equivalent was .46", so this was 5% water content.  Winds on Mt. Baldy during that period never guested over 10 mph.  

I took a look at forecasts from the 12Z models on the prior day (2 April) and the GFS was going for nothing.  The HRRR .15" water and 2.7" of low-density snow.  Even yesterday morning, expectations were low.  The Utah Avalanche Center Forecast that morning called for 0.5 to 1" of snow.

This isn't to throw them under the bus as they do a great job, but just to illustrate that yesterday's snowfall was pretty unexpected.  It wasn't handled well by the models or the forecasters.  So what happened?

Well, morning broke with not much happening other than a few scattered snow showers.  At 1459 UTC (0859 MDT), there were some light returns on radar, but nothing to get excited about.  

However, the flow was light and the airmass unstable, and with a little surface heating, convection began to get going.  By 1857 UTC (1257 MDT), during an hour in which Alta picked up 3" of snow, localized convective snow showers had developed over portions of the central Wasatch, especially around Little Cottonwood, and the high terrain down to Mt. Timpanogos.  

Even then, the radar wasn't all that impressive, but the relationship between radar reflectivity and snowfall rate is not a good one.  Low-density snow of the type that fell yesterday often doesn't light up radar screens.  This is why it's so valuable to have weather cams and automated snow depth sensors to monitor actual conditions at the ground.  

The development of the first snow showers over high terrain was probably favored by the light flow and unstable conditions, with daytime heating yielding upslope flow and convergence over the mountains.  

The convection became more widespread with continued surface heating as evident in the 2033 UTC (1433 MDT) radar image from another period when Alta got 3" in an hour.  Nevertheless, snow showers persisted over upper Little Cottonwood.  

It's very difficult to reliably predict the location and intensity of these snow showers.  We can anticipate their development, but questions of where, when, and how intense are hard to answer reliably.  Neither our current models nor human cognition are very good at distinguishing a situation like the one yesterday from one where the snow showers are less productive and maybe provide light accumulations. The processes are simply too small in scale and too sensitive to small changes in the atmospheric stability and moisture content.  Basically, yesterday really was a tough forecast, at least with lead times of more than a couple of hours. 

I suspect if you were skiing yesterday afternoon, you probably didn't care.

About That New Ski Resort in the Oquirhhs...

Hopefully most of you have figured out that the previous post, New Ski Resort to Open in the Oquirrhs, was April 1st foolery.  

A good April fools joke needs to be somewhat believable, so let's break down that post a bit more.

First, the idea of development and possibly a ski resort in the Oquirrhs is quite believable.  Surely as the Wasatch Front metro area expands and the Salt Lake, Tooelle, and Utah Valleys are paved over, there must be developers with an eye on the undeveloped island that is the Oquirrhs.  In fact, Kennecott Land once spoke quite seriously about building a ski resort on their property in the Oquirrhs.  If a ski resort can be built in the snow desert and scrub oak of the Mayflower area, eventually one will probably come to the Oquirrhs.  

Is snow as plentiful in the Oquirrhs as the Little Cottonwood?  No.  The Rocky Basin Settlement Snotel in the southern Oquirrhs at 8700 feet has a median peak SWE of 24 inches compared to 43 inches at 9100 feet at Snowbird.  The Rocky Basin Settlement number though is pretty close to the 25 inches at Thaynes Canyon (9250 ft) in the upper reaches of Park City Mountain Resort.  However, the Oquirrhs also get about as much lake-effect as the Cottonwoods.  Below is the water equivalent snowfall (left panel) produced in lake-effect storms showing that the SNOTELs in the Oquirrhs are on par with Mill D North and Snowbird.  

Is there a powder Shangri-La as I suggest in the post?  Probably not.  I haven't been touring in the Oquirrhs this winter as suggested by the post, but I have in the past.  My guess is that there is no magic microclimate like Little Cottonwood in the Oquirrhs, although there are more mountain lions and fewer people.

Is snow farming from season to season a real thing?  Yes it is.  That article from Levi was real.  They are piling up snow, preserving it beneath geotextile blankets, and using it to open the following season.  Could such a thing happen in Utah?  I don't know, but there is the expertise at the U to figure it out and it strikes me as potentially being worth looking into as it preserves water, energy, and money.  Perhaps it would be most feasible at a place like Alta which typically closes when the snowpack close to its deepest so there's no impact on their skiing business to pile up the snow at the time of peak snowpack.  Maybe they could preserve enough to have cover for Mambo->Corkscrew come the next November.  Or Main Street where there's no snowmaking but maybe they could preserve snow near the base of Mt. Baldy which has less total incoming solar due to topographic shading.  

And finally, we have the extension of the red-line Trax into the Oquirrhs.  That was pure fiction designed to give away the April 1st foolery.  There are no such plans.  We can't even get rail to our current ski areas.  

New Ski Resort to Open in Oquirrhs

Over the past several months I have been working with a group of investors developing a new ski resort for the Oquirrh Mountains west of Salt Lake City.  My non-disclosure agreement expired today, so I thought I would take the opportunity to talk about their plans.  

The Oquirrh Mountains have extensive amounts of private land, mainly owned by Rio Tinto/Kennecott.  This investment group, however, owns approximately 8000 acres of land near the ghost-town of Ophir at elevations between 7000 and 10000 feet elevation.  You haven't seen me much in the Wasatch this winter because I've been doing a lot of ski touring on the property, avoiding crowds and getting to know the dry powder of the Oquirrhs on an intimate basis.  

I thought snowfall wouldn't be as plentiful as in Little Cottonwood, but after skiing a season there, I'm pretty certain the resort gets more.  It's simply an incredible microclimate, fueled by lake effect funneled into a terrain concavity.  If you think Alta gets a lot of snow in northwest flow, wait until you see this place in northerly flow.  I've toured in five storms with snowfall rates of more than 4" an hour.  There's little doubt that this is the future of lift-served skiing in northern Utah.  

In addition, to provide insurance against climate change, the investors have secured substantial water rights for snowmaking and are planning on developing Utah's first extensive use of snow farming in order to recycle snow from season to season.  They have hired an expert from Levi, Finland, where this is now being done to preserve snow from one season to the next.  

In fact, they are planning a trial run as they build out the resort over the next 18 months.  Next season, while they will still be under development, they will start making snow on what will be their signature run, Showcase. Comparable in length and pitch to famed upper, mid- and lower warm springs run at Sun Valley, the plan is to blow snow into deep piles next winter and then preserve those piles through the summer by covering them with white, geotexttile blankets to reflect sunlight and insulate the snow piles, allowing as much as 70% of the snow to survive through the warm season.  

They then plan to open the 2026/27 season in mid September with 3000 vertical feet of skiing on Showcase.  They expect to do this each season moving forward, pipping Snowbird for Utah's longest season.  

The main challenge at this stage is figuring out how to get people to the base of the resort.  The investors are currently working with UTA on plans for an extension of the Trax Red Line through an old mining tunnel in the eastern Oquirrhs.  Incredibly, this tunnel is built at grade, allowing light rail to deposit skiers at the base of the resort without having to use an expensive cog-railway design.  

I anticipate that this development will completely transform skiing in northern Utah.  Once skiers get an appetite for the dry powder of the Oquirrhs, Little Cottonwood will be an afterthought and the red snake will be dead.