I'm a little frustrated with our friends over on the Midwest and east coast because they are hogging all of the weather this year, although after this weekend, they might be willing to share after they get hit with a massive winter storm and extreme cold temperatures.
In our neck of the woods, our snowpack is barely scraping by. Seasonal outlooks aren't budging too much for the next month and beyond, but we definitely still have time to catch up.
Maybe it's the chronic optimist in me, or the example of last year's amazing late winter catch up, but I'm hoping we have a big surge in activity in February and March. Let a skier dream.
In terms of the short term forecast, we do have a weak system that will focus on the southern half of the state. The storm will be splitting apart as it moves into the region, bringing at most a few inches to the southern and central ranges. The snow amounts for the northern half of the state are even more depressing with just local pockets of mountain snow bringing, at the very most, a few inches to the ranges.
In better news, we'll likely see enough cooling at the mountain tops to alleviate or dilute the valley inversions and air pollution a little bit, but it'll probably build back up again. We'll see things dry out and cool down following this "event" and note that I'm putting this event in quotation marks.
The pattern next week looks to start dry, but there is a shot at sub activity later next week, even then, the jet stream is so messy, making the exact details very tricky to pinpoint. I know I'm rooting for something to happen next week.
Temperatures in the northern valleys will be hugging the 40s before dipping down to the mid 30s this weekend. Southern Utah will be sitting comfortably in the 50s heading into next week.