Well its on like Donkey Kong folks, no time to dust off the cobwebs it is game time. Weak snow form October has faceted over the dry November This has left our upper elevation North-East aspects ready for a show. But not so fast! Some N-E terrain in the Ogden area only had <3" of snow so how well connected are those avalanches going to be? Only time will tell. You may get tricked with spacial variability with the old snow in the Ogden Area. In the SLC zone the problem is much more widespread which makes forecasting a little easier. Here in Ogden it is going to be baby steps in stepping out.
So here is what we have. 3-9 inches of old snow distributed over North-East aspects above 7,700ft. Some of this snow is not well connected. We added surface hoar to the equation last week and most of the surface hoar was preserved with the November 25th storm. Snowbasin was the big winner with old snow lingering in on the north end of No Name and all the upper cirques, Ben Lomond was second with the NE face seeing some residual snow from the October storms but not as much as Snowbasin, Powder Mountain and Monte Cristo really had only patches of October snow by the time it started to snow again.
Powder Mountain snowpack on November 26 8,500 ft
So here we go with the next storm, Heavy snow in the Ogden valley and surrounding mountains. Snowbasin is around 13inches, Powder was at 12 for current storm total (HN12), with Ben Lomond around 10 inches. Models are predicting more snow, and lots of it though the holiday weekend! With Snowbasin opening on Friday, be heads up if you travel outside the current boundary. Human triggered avalanches will be likely to trigger especially in areas that have the October snow.
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