After suffering through weeks of drought, we've been getting great data for the SNOWSCAPE2026 field campaign during the storms last week and this week.
Today we're sampling the cold-frontal system as it is moving through northern Utah and across the northern Wasatch Range. Below is a video from our causeway radar site during the frontal passage this morning. Hopefully Blogger won't mangle it too much.
Having radars on both the western (windward) and eastern (leeward) sides of the Wasatch allows us to examine how precipitation features are affected during transit over a narrow mountain barrier. In particular, we have the Snowbasin area heavily sampled by ground instruments and now scanned by the radars. As I'm writing this, we're tracking a strong cold-frontal band as it approaches the mountains (left-hand image below, Snowbasin indicated by SB). This band just produced lightning in Layton. With the radar on the causeway, we can observe it in detail as it approaches and moves up the windward slope of the Wasatch. Then we can observed the front moving into the lee from Huntsville. Right now the backside is seeing widespread precipitation.
Enough for now. Back to work.
Science!
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