Wasatch Weather Weenies

Our work to improve forecasts of snow-to-liquid ratio (SLR) and snowfall was recently featured in a deep-dive article by Mitch Tobin of The Water Desk, an initiative of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder.  Peter Veals and Michael Pletcher really led this work and we benefited from collaborations with others from NOAA, the NOAA/National Weather Service and Community Collaborative Rain, Hail, and Snow Network.  And a huge shout out for everyone who provided SLR observations.   You can access the article at  https://waterdesk.org/2026/05/machine-learning-snow-to-liquid-ratio/ . 

The area around Innsbruck is a hikers paradise for anyone of any age and fitness.  You can do enormous vertical if you are so inclined, hiking right from town, or cable car assisted hikes focused on alpine meadows or peak hopping.  The public transit and cable cars make access easy.  Forget the driving.  Even the buses have amazing views.   Over the past four days I did four cable-car assisted hikes illustrating the great diversity of the region. None of these hikes were arduous or long, but they provided great views and experiences.  Below I've circled the cable cars I used to access the higher elevations.   On day 1 I did a hike on the Nordkette immediately above Innsbruck.  I summarized this hike in the previous post (see Hike to Brandjochboden ), but will add here that the Nordkette is the most accessible Alpine hiking you can do from Innsbruck.  The Nordkettenbahn consists of a funicular and two cable cars that take you from ol...

It's a beautiful long weekend here in Innsbruck (we get Monday off too).  I took the opportunity today to hike from the top of the Seegrubenbahn cable car to small, 2000 meter plateau known as the Brandjochboden.  The route traversed below the crest of the Nordkette, the main ridge that rises above the Inn Valley near Innsbruck, offering non-stop views.  Below I've highlighted the first mile or so of the route from Seebrube, which is hidden in this photo but near the start of the arrow. The morning began with just a bit of haze and pollution in the Inn Valley.  This is not all that unusual as it either sneaks in from Germany or Italy or is produced by the enormous amount of traffic that flows through the Inn Valley between Germany and Italy.   Such pollution is usually most apparent when looking toward the morning sun.  This is a result of what is known as forward scattering of sunlight, perhaps a topic for a future post.  The views in other direc...

Watching from a distance, the official start of summer/Memorial Day Outlook is generally looking good for Utah.  For the most part it looks nice, with above average temperatures, although the models are hinting at a chance of some afternoon or evening showers and maybe even a scattered thunderstorm mainly over the high terrain over the weekend.  One example is below, which is the ECMWF forecast for 2100 UTC (3 PM MDT) Sunday 24 May with some showers over the Uintas, Tavaputs Plateau, and high terrain in southern Utah.   Models vary on the where and the when and so it's just worth keeping an eye on the forecasts and the sky when recreating.   Enjoy the long weekend.  

 I see that a return of colder weather and mountain snow is in the forecast for northern Utah. Downloaded from NWS Salt Lake City web site at 0840 MDT Sunday 17 May 2026 We just had a round of cold weather and snow here in Innsbruck too.  We could have used it in March, but it does create some nice scenery. It almost looked like winter at the top of the Patscherkofel gondola today.  Pretty good coverage on the upper slopes thanks to a few inches of high-density fresh.   Snow is confined to the upper third of the mountain, but I did see someone booting up at the top of the gondola.  I can only assume they were going to skin up the access road that goes to the top of the mountain as going down would take you to the snow line in no time.  There are several mountain huts on the Patscherkofel.  Along with gondola access, you can opt to do anything from short to long hikes to these huts.  All ages are on the mountain for this reason.  Near the...

The Rapid Refresh Forecast System (RRFS) and RRFS Ensemble Forecast System (REFS) is scheduled to become operational with the 1200 UTC run on August 31, 2026.  The RRFS ensemble has been intermittently available on weather.utah.edu now for a couple of years (yes, I know it hasn't been available in a few weeks).  It's been a long slog for the National Weather Service to get the RRFS operational, so let's hope this proves to be a productive upgrade. The RRFS and REFS will replace the NAM, HREF, SREF, and HiresW operational modling systems, if you happen to use those.  These will all be retired on the same day the RRFS and REFS become operational, along with their derived products.  I won't be sad to see any of these go.   As is often the case, they have made the acronyms and ensemble model configurations as complicated as possible.  The so-called deterministic RRFS will run out to 18 hours hourly and out to 84 hours for the 0000, 0600, 1200, and 1800 UTC...

Spring and summer mountain thunderstorms can produce precipitation that sometimes includes graupel or small hail that can penetrate well below the freezing level.   A good example happened yesterday over the Nordkette ridge just north of Innsbruck.  I had a great view of it from my office. The storm popped up around 2 PM local time.  The streaky virga in the right of the photo below srongly suggested the presence of graupel or small hail.  A bit farther to the west (left in the photo) though was less precipitation and even a bit of sun peaking through a hole in the clouds.   After a couple of rumbles of thunder, the storm was over quickly.  Light graupel accumulations were evident where the cell was, with accumulations reaching down to about 1900 meters, whereas the high ridge farther west, which reaches over 2300 meters, was still snow free.   A web-cam on the portion of the ridge that received precipitation showed some graupel accumula...

One of the great things about coming to Europe to work is getting exposed to the latest and greatest modeling systems for operational weather prediction.   Modeling systems for operational weather prediction in the United States has stagnated now for several years.  The last major upgrade was when the Global Forecast System (GFS) upgraded to the Finite–Volume Cubed Sphere (FV3) dynamical core in 2021.  Beyond that, upgrades have been  incremental, with no major changes to the grid spacing of the GFS (13-km) or the HRRR (3-km).  The GFS Ensemble (GEFS), Short-Range Ensemble Forecast System (SREF), and High Resolution Ensemble Forecast system (HREF) have aged and are no longer cutting edge.  Meanwhile in Europe, both numerical and artificial intelligence weather prediction systems (NWP and AIWP respectively) are advancing rapidly.  Readers of this blog are likely well aware that the European Center for Medium-range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) ensemb...

This is my second long-term visit to Innsbruck and in both cases my body went through a real transformation due to the amount of walking that one does here.  I would guess that I average walking 10 km a day, scattered around from morning to night.  It's a great way to keep the body in motion.   And Innsbruck is a wonderful place to walk.  The town in interesting and many places historical.  There are views everywhere.  The old town area is car free, but even elsewhere, the road traffic is moving slowly and respectfully.  Just look at a crosswalk and drivers will stop.  Austrian law is very protective of pedestrians, but drivers here are also very pedestrian aware because everyone here walks some.   One can also hike right from town, accessing mountain huts on the Nordkette north of town or if you are so inclined, ascending all the way to the ridgeline about 2000 meters above town.  Public transit is exceptional so one can acces...