Good evening, this is Casey Olsen with the Utah Climate Center.
Last week, we closed the page on November, which was warm and a little below a normal for precip. The pattern was dominated by the storms that kept splitting apart before they reached us. Many valley locations saw very late snow falls links to high temperatures. Overall, November was one big meh for me, I give it a four out of 10.
Don't get too down in the dumps, snow lovers, because we have a healthy amount of moisture heading towards northern Utah from an atmospheric river joining up with a short wave low pressure trough from the northwest to kick off meteorological winter.
With this particular storm, mountain ranges that have west to northwest facing slopes will force air to rise, squeezing out a few more flakes. I'm selfishly rooting for the Bear River Mountains and cottonwoods, which do well with this kind of flow.
As I'm writing this Thursday afternoon, all our ingredients are phasing together for a significant winter event, with one to three feet expected in the mountains.
As winds shift around, we're seeing temperatures jump between warmer and cooler, so valleys can expect a mix of rain and snow throughout the weekend.
A high pressure ridge dominates the west coast, but these short wave ripples will continue to bring brief periods of active weather into next week. That being said, temperatures are generally expected to rise next week.
For the weekend, the northern valleys will be hugging the upper 30s, lower 40s, while the southern portion of the state will miss out on this system, remaining quite warm and sunny in the mid 50s.
With Utah Climate Center, I'm Casey Olsen.