The Deluge So Far

It's been an active 48 hours over northern Utah thanks to the Saturday showers and thunderstorms, remnants of Rachel, and several other precipitation drivers. The plot below shows the estimated precipitation over northern Utah for the 48-hour period ending at 1400 UTC (0800 MDT) today (Monday, October 12.  Everyoen got some, but the biggest amounts are on the Alpine Ridge above Little Cottonwood Canyon and over the south slope of the Uintas where there are local accumulations of more than 3.5 inches.  Most of the central and northern Wasatch has seen at least an inch.  The lightest accumulations are in the northwest Salt Lake Valley (<0.5").  

Source: MRMS

Big Cottonwood Canyon was closed for a while yesterday due to flooding on the road.

Last night, rain began to turn to snow at the highest elevations. This morning, Alta's High Rustler cam sows some spotty accumulations above about 9500 feet.  

Source: Alta

The coverage is more continuous at the top of Snowbird (11,000 ft).

Source: Snowbird (obtained 0855 MDT 12 Oct 2026).

Periods of precipitation for northern Utah valleys and mountains look to continue through tomorrow.  After that, the models differ on how quickly the trough will exit, with some extending the action a bit longer.  Snow levels will probably remain near or above 8500 feet today, but lower later tonight to around 7500 feet.  

The models have a lot of ideas about amounts as they have different timing for the movement of bands around the upper-level trough into northern Utah.  Some are drier for today, others wetter.  Some are high on tomorrow, but others drier.  We'll see how this all shakes out, but above about 9500 feet we could be looking at 10-20" by Wednesday morning.  

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