Week in Review

A series of weather systems on a southwest flow arrived over Friday through Sunday Feb 17/18/19 with storm totals of up to 24" in the Cottonwoods, 14" in the Park City mountains, 18" Ogden mountains, and 6" at the mid elevations in the Provo mountains. Storm densities were Cascade-like with water totals exceeding 2".

Sunday was an especially active day with several skier-triggered avalanches reported from the backcountry. These slides included both storm snow as well as fresh wind slabs, and were running within the storm snow as well as a layer of faceted snow that formed Feb 12-15 during a period of clear high pressure.

Monday and Tuesday featured warming temperatures, with increasingly strong winds that gusted over 60 mph by Tuesday afternoon. These strong winds ushered in a cold front that arrived Tuesday evening. A cold, unstable northwest flow led to continued moderate to strong snowfall since Tuesday evening, with impressive storm totals as of Friday morning:

• 30-47" in LCC and BCC with 2.0" - 4.0" of water
• 31" Park City with 2.35" of water
• 34" Ogden mountains with 2.5" water
• 23" Provo with 1.6" of water.

Avalanche activity during this storm included wind drifts primarily at the upper elevations and long-running sluffs in the loose dry snow and resulted from control work at the resorts and the mountain highways, as well as natural activity that occurred during spikes in precipitation. During this period, the avalanche hazard was either Moderate or Considerable, but with brief spikes to High during periods of heavy precipitation.