Snow(Making) in Forecast

Mild weather remains in the forecast through tomorrow (Tuesday) when the warmest air of the current dry spell is expected to move over northern Utah and 700-mb (10,000 ft) temperatures over the Salt Lake Valley peak at about +5ºC.  Tomorrow will be a good day for a foothill hike.  

The past few days have been a serious setback for the snowpack.  It's now a do over for the south-facing aspects, which are snow free.  Snowmaking at the resorts has been limited or impossible.  Fortunately the sun angle is low enough that upper-elevation north-facing aspects are retaining most of their snow.  

Forecasts for the next seven days show a shift in the pattern after Tuesday with Utah under the influence of cooler northwesterly flow.  The resorts should be able to get back to snowmaking, and I suspect they will be firing all the guns in their arsenals by later in the week when 700-mb temperatures are forecast to drop to near -7ºC.  

I wish I could say that there was a big storm on tap, but as things look right now, that's not the case through next weekend.  The models bring a couple of weak short-wave troughs through, but right now none of them look to produce more than a few mountain snow showers.  Perhaps one of them will prove stronger than suggested by the models, but I'm not optimistic.  

Sometimes there is hope in the extended, but the 8-14 day outlook from the Climate Prediction Center looks bleak.  

Source: CPC

Of course, these long-range forecasts have only modest skill at best.  Burn some skis and the pattern will change.