Last week, I mentioned that we were in “Fool’s Spring.” Any longtime Utah resident knows that despite those record warm temperatures, it was only a matter of time before winter revisited us. Sure enough, I am looking outside on this April Fool’s Day morning, watching the snow fall. No foolin’ here.
March was undoubtedly good to us. As I reported last week, our snowpack in Park City miraculously climbed back to average after spending much of the heart of winter well-below the median. Last week’s warmth, however, saw us retreat a bit and we now sit at 93% of median for the date at Thaynes Canyon.
The ongoing storm will likely get us close to the median once again by the middle of this week. Overall, not a bad place to be as we enter the real spring months and the melt-off begins in earnest.
Thanks to the significant storm pummeling Utah as I type this, powder is likely for the middle of this week. We will then have additional weak impulses ripple through northern Utah on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday of this week.
Normally, these wouldn’t do much for us, but this time of year we have a high enough sun angle that we can destabilize the atmosphere in the afternoons. All it takes is a modicum of available moisture to fire up afternoon snow showers. Therefore, expect scattered snow showers, particularly in the afternoons for the next few days, before going mostly sunny for the weekend.
While temperature will remain cool for the rest of the work week, we begin a gradual warming trend over the weekend that will eventually take us back to well-above normal temperatures later next week.
The graphic shows the expected minimum and maximum temperatures of the European model’s ensemble members for each of the next 15 days. It looks like “Spring 2.0” is on the way.
We have less than three weeks remaining before Deer Valley and Park City Mountain call it a season and shutdown winter operations. It’s locals’ season and any powder we get from now on is a special treat for those of us in town.
Will we see more fresh snow before closing day? It’s possible. Next week, I hope to have at least one more storm to forecast.
For up-to-date forecasts, you can subscribe to Evan’s Utah Daily Snow forecast on OpenSnow.com and the OpenSnow app.