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.