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Observation: Little Cottonwood Canyon

Observation Date
10/18/2012
Observer Name
Kobernik
Region
Salt Lake
Location Name or Route
Upper LCC
Weather
Weather Comments
While I am thoroughly enjoying the fall weather it is time to start thinking about the upcoming season. Weather models are showing a large storm system that is supposed to move through our area starting around Sunday night with a number of waves that may produce enough snow to stay on the ground for the winter. This means it's time for us to start paying attention.
Comments
I was up in Little Cottonwood Canyon today to help get some weather instruments installed at the Atwater (Cowplot) study plot. This site is maintained by UDOT and they are gracious enough to let some other organizations benefit by using it for snow studies. This year I've teamed up with Jim Steenburg and Leah Campbell who have a handful of new instruments they want to get familiar with so they can deploy them for a lake effect snow study. This means we have a brand new precipitation bucket to measure water here at Atwater. Sweet!
Looking around at the upper ends of the canyon there is just an insignificant amount of snow on the highest north facing slopes.
This amount basically means nothing to us as far as looking at any type of persistent weak layer that could get buried.
On a side note, the 75mm guns were in the UDOT shed where we were pulling out weather instruments. UDOT forecaster Adam told me that these guns were getting retired. Kind of an end of an era. The 105mm are still in use.