Wasatch Weather Weenies

Thanksgiving weekend looks to conclude with a storm that will likely produce some snowflakes at all elevations in northern Utah. It's not a big storm, but being the first that might bring winter driving conditions to some areas so far this season, at the end of Thanksgiving weekend, it's worth monitoring if  you will be traveling.   The storm will be produced by an upper-level trough and cold front that will drop into Utah on Sunday from the northwest.  Below is the GFS forecast valid 1800 UTC 30 November (11 AM Sunday) showing the trough extending across northern Utah and Nevada.   Below is the HRRR forecast sounding for the Salt Lake City International Airport valid 1800 UTC 30 November (11 AM Sunday).  It shows saturated conditions down to the valley floor with temperatures just above 0°C.   The HRRR keeps surface temps just a smidge above freezing as the front moves through.  If that were to verify, the most likely outcome would be s...

There's still not much to get excited about in the forecasts.  The main weather feature of interest over the next several days is a cold front that is currently forecast to be moving through Utah Friday night.   Below is the GFS forecast valid 0600 UTC 25 November as an example of one model forecast showing some precipitation over northern Utah as the cold air is pushing in.   Right now, this looks like a "quick hitter" variety of storm.  The GFS is putting out 0.57" of water and 8" of snow for Alta-Collins through 5 AM MST Saturday.  The Utah Snow Ensemble members are less enthusiastic with a median of 0.09" of water and 1" of snow through that same time, although some members are slower with the system and give us some more into Sunday.  Still it's not a lot.  The snowiest member is putting down 20",. but that's not a likely scenario and perhaps we wore out our luck with the U's improbable win over K-State on Saturday.  If we could g...

Thanksgiving weekend 2001.   We traveled to with the kids to Seattle to enjoy the annual feast with family.   When we departed, most likely on November 21, there was no skiing.  A look at the Alta-Collins data on MesoWest suggests a 10" natural snow depth.  My recollection was that there was no snow, but perhaps their was a little.   When we returned, there was skiing.  Plenty of skiing.   At around 0000 MST 22 November 2001, the start of Thanksgiving Day, it started snowing.  Eventually, 108 inches fell at Alta-Collins, including one hundred inches in one hundred hours.  The press called it the hundred inch storm.  Pretty catchy.  It led to one of the funner papers I've written during my career .  The hundred inch storm was really produced by two storms or should I say two frontal systems.  Snow at Alta came ahead of each front, with each front, and behind each front, with both post-frontal periods pro...

The mild first-half of November is now in the books.  The Salt Lake City International Airport came in with the warmest on record with an average temperature of 53.0°F. Source: https://xmacis.rcc-acis.org/ Last night's storm dropped about 4" on Alta Collins.  Not much to get excited about.  I haven't looked carefully, but the big winner appearred to be Ben Lomond Peak which got about 2.3" of water and had a total snow depth of 10" at 5 AM this morning.   The pattern continues to look splitty for the next few days.  Just an an example, below is the GFS 500-mb height (contours) and wind speed (color fill) forecast valid 2100 UTC 20 Nov (2 PM MST Thursday).  The Pacific Jet is forecast to be well consolidated near 150 W but split upstream of the North American coast into two branches, one moving through western Canada and the other over northern Mexico.   The various ensemble forecasts either keep us dry or give us some light amounts as sys...

Delays in starting dates for ski areas are in the news.  Brianhead was scheduled to open on November 7 and has pushed their starting date back to November 21.  Solitude was scheduled to open on on Friday (Nov 14), but has pushed it's starting date back to next Wednesday (see t his Trib article ).   In my view, this is much ado about nothing.  November is a fickle month.  Sometimes resorts can open, even as early as late October with natural snow as Brighton did in October 2004.  Sometimes we get a cold spell that enables sufficient snowmaking to get some terrain open with limited natural snow.  And sometimes we get a nothing burger.  We're getting the latter this year.  If you get a warm, dry stretch in February, you get a suntan while doing groomer laps.  When one happens in November, you get a delay to the start of the ski season.   It is true that temperatures so far this November have been warm, with an an average for ...

The Department of Atmospheric Sciences and many others at the University of Utah are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Wendy Wagner after a battle with ovarian cancer. Wendy had a lasting impact on our program and anyone who had the good fortune to know her at the U. Wendy was a two time Olympian in cross country skiing.  She walked into my office after returning home from the 2006 Olympic Games in Torino, Italy with an intense desire to "get off the hamster wheel" and do something new in mountain meteorology and snow science.  Talk about energy!  During this period, Dave Hanscom who had known Wendy for years through The Utah Nordic Alliance (TUNA) and Utah racing scene, sent me a note saying that she would do great things for our program.  He was right. While in our graduate program, Wendy worked with Prof. John Horel to develop techniques to measure snow along cross-country ski racing courses.  She then used a physics-based snowpack model to simulate ...

This month marks my 30th anniversary as a professor at the University of Utah.  We left Seattle in early November, stopping in Snoqualmie Pass to say goodbye to the maritime climate of the Pacific Northwest and wondering what life would be like in the western interior.  I started work, officially, on November 15, 1995.  What a wonderful ride it has been.  I thought I would share a few career highlights.   Nagano Olympic Winter Games 1998 In 1998, the Salt Lake Olympic Organizing Committee sent me to the Winter Olympics to learn about weather support for the games.  I spent four days in the Hakuba Valley and Nagano learning about weather impacts on sports and Olympic logistics.   With Dave Hanscom at the Snow Harp Cross Country Venue Given that I was there for only four days, I slept little and learned and explored as much as I could. I met with Japanese Meteorological Agency meteorologists at the venues and main operations center (I was provi...

A few days ago we discussed how the GFS was an outlier of the many forecasts for the storm that will come through northern Utah tonight (see Some Thoughts on Using Long-Range Forecasts ).  Specifically, it was producing a good deal more precipitation than most members of the Utah Snow Ensemble, which is derived from the US Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFS) and ECMWF Ensemble (ENS).   Sadly, the latest forecasts continue to produce light precipitation and just a frosting of snow for Alta-Collins.  As an example, the six members of the Rapid Refresh Forecast System (RRFS) ensemble produce 0.25" of water equivalent or less and 3" of snow or less for Alta-Collins.   The latest HRRR and GFS are also below those thresholds.  The 0600 UTC GFS is down to 0.08" of water and about an inch of snow.  Dust on dirt if it verifies, although the snow might be somewhat wet and not cold smoke.   Sometimes an outlier forecast like the one from the GFS...

After July, November is probably my least favorite months due to its "tweener" status between seasons.  However, if we can't have snow, the start to this November is a pretty good one with spectacular fall weather.  One of the nice things about northern Utah is that you can find fall colors somewhere from late September to early November.  The mountain aspens may now be leaf free, but the valley and foothills still have some great color.   The bucks have also returned to lower elevations.  I had a brief conversation with this trophy on Sunday.  I gave him a wide berth.