SAVE THE DATES!
Saturday, December 6 - 18th Annual Utah Snow and Avalanche Workshop (USAW). This session will be held in-person at the Wasatch Jr High School Auditorium. 3750 S 3100 E, Salt Lake City, UT 84109. Information and tickets are available here.
Avalanche Awareness Week!
The 7th Annual Avalanche Awareness is the first week of December! This week is jam-packed with events to get you ready for the season and a chance to connect with other backcountry users. We hope to see you out there!
Falling in line with Nikki's last update on Tuesday, our recent spits and spats of storms didn’t produce as much as the high end of predictions hoped. Across the Wasatch, we saw a mix of rain and snow since, with final totals coming in at:
Little Cottonwood: Trace to 1 inch of snow (0.02 to 0.04 inches H2O)
Big Cottonwood: Trace to 1 inch of snow (0.05 to 0.10 inches H2O)
Park City Ridgeline: Trace to 1 inch of snow (0.0 to 0.24 inches H2O)
The high pressure ridge off the Pacific continues to split storm systems in unusual patterns toward Northern Utah. The Central Wasatch mountains could see up to 2-4" of snow with a weak storm and a stark drop in temperatures arriving at the beginning of next week. The modest high elevation accumulations from this small system will be threatened by the rapidly rising temperatures days later. As of Wednesday the 19th, the NRCS puts us at less than 50% of median SWE. There's promise of a stronger system spinning in from the NW at the end of the month with cold temperatures and more precipitation—though it's too early to be sure. Keep your fingers crossed.
Snow conditions remain pretty grim. The highest elevation, cold northerly slopes continue to be the only places holding any snow. While you'll mostly find 4-10" of disconnected old snow up high, there are reports of minimal sections of connected old snow in the Cottonwoods, such as on Silver Fork Headwall. As Drew said, it is worth noting where the dirt is because it might be the safest place to ride once storms really start rolling for us. Slopes with old snow will be guilty until proven innocent.
Observations continue to be quiet, with our latest observation from the Salt Lake area coming from Trent Meisenheimer and Dave Kelly in upper Little Cottonwood last week. Mark White and Jenna Malone were out on the Cottonwood ridgeline and the Park City ridgeline, and Drew stitched together a short video you can find here.
Coverage Prior to the storm in Upper Little Cottonwood - Kelly/Meisenheimer
