Wasatch Weather Weenies

I'm going on a temporary hiatus for a couple of weeks.  Blogging may be light to non existent.  Congratulations to all of the University of Utah graduates, especially those from atmospheric sciences.  

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.  

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.    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 a...

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, deg...

"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/ 

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....

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 lo...

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 bett...

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...

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 ...

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 conca...