Alta snowfall record?

With all of the snowfall record talk this year at Alta I wanted to clarify things a little due to some confusion. The all time Alta ski resort record for snowfall has been smashed (800"+ and counting) this year with one month to go. The Alta ski resort snowfall season includes all snowfall between October 1st and April 30th at the Collins study plot which is at 9662' in elevation.

The all time season (includes all months) snowfall record for the town of Alta is 846.8" from the 1982-83 season. For this record the snowfall data was taken from a study plot at or near the current Alta guard study plot which is at 8799' in elevation.

This is just an educated guess but if someone had been around to measure snowfall at the Alta Collins study plot for the entire water year in 1982-83 and 1983-84 one or both could have topped 900".

Photo credit Jim Steenburgh.

Utah Snow Water Equivalent is 159% of Normal

 

Possible new Utah low pressure record!

 Looking at the below Vernal airport observations from today it looks like the 28.94" Hg (980 mb) could be a new Utah State record for the lowest pressure ever recorded!

Go to https://mesowest.utah.edu/cgi-bin/droman/meso_base_dyn.cgi?stn=KVEL&unit=0&timetype=LOCAL for current/past Vernal data.

Utah Snow Water Equivalent is 171% of Normal

 

Peter Sinks

Peter Sinks in Utah (near Logan summit) has hit -62F this morning! Link to the current temperature at http://weather.gov/wrh/timeseries?site=PSINK The on-minute average low occurred between the 15 minutes observations listed. This is the lowest temperature recorded in Utah since -62F at Middle Sinks (very close to Peter Sinks) on January 30th 2002.

Peter Sinks is a natural sink hole at 8,164 feet in elevation, it is about 1/2 mile in diameter. Cold air sinks at night and pools into this natural sink hole making it much colder than nearby areas, also no one lives there. On February 1st 1985 Peter Sinks was -69.3F which is the record low for Utah. More information about Peter Sinks at https://climate.usu.edu/PeterSinks/index.php

Snow Water Equivalent % of Normal

 

Utah wind gust of 130 mph?

The 130 mph wind gust recorded on Hidden Peak at Snowbird on December 21st 2022 would be the new state record if it stands breaking the 124 mph wind gust at the same location on November 8th 1986. I'm a meteorologist and have been looking at Baldy peak and Hidden peak winds for 25+ years, have been skiing at Snowbird almost exclusively since 1986. For the first 20+ years of looking at winds on these two nearby peaks the winds on average have been stronger (not always) on Baldy peak. In June of 2015 Hidden peak observation went off-line and when it came back on-line in January of 2020 I noticed that that Hidden peak winds were now stronger (not always) on average compared to Baldy peak. The main change at Hidden Peak between 2015 and 2020 was the addition of the large restaurant and ski patrol building. What is possibly happening is the winds at the peak are speeding up to go over the top of the new building, similar to how winds increase in speed as they flow over the top of a airplane wing. Bottom line, the Hidden Peak winds speeds now read higher by about 30% than reality regardless of the reason.

Below is an image that compares Baldy (AMB) and Hidden Peak (HDP) at two different times in similar conditions, data was pulled from MesoWest. The first data set is from December of 2000 when Baldy peak hit 114mph gust and the second is from December of 2022 with the event that recorded the 130 mph winds gust on Hidden Peak at 9:45pm on the 21st. Note that the below data only compared hourly data so the 130 mph gust is missing. You can easily see for that particular day in 2000 the winds on average (not always) were stronger on Baldy peak compared to Hidden Peak and how it has reversed in 2022. This is just one day of data but you can pick any day between January 1997 and May of 2015 on MesoWest to compare and on average you will see that Baldy has always (on average) had stronger winds all the way until the Hidden peak site went off-line in June of 2015.

Snow cover - December 19th 2022

 

Utah has a water management crisis!

What we have in Utah is a water management crisis! If the agricultural industry which uses 82% (4,182,000 of  5,100,000 acre feet) of the available water in Utah cut its use by just 15% (627,300 acre feet) it would save almost as much water that is used by the entire residential, commercial, industrial, and institutional sector which is 800,000 acre feet.

Alfalfa/hay farming represents 0.2% of the Utah economy but uses 68% (3,468,000 acre feet) of available water! Anything individuals can do to save water helps but getting Utah farmers to stop flood irrigation and stop growing alfalfa/hay is where the biggest focus should be in the effort to save water.

A few articles below that go into more details with the numbers I used.

https://www.ksl.com/article/35054495/82-percent-of-utah-water-goes-to-farmers-mdash-heres-why

https://www.ksl.com/article/46345981/each-utahn-uses-an-average-of-242-gallons-of-water-per-day

https://www.sltrib.com/news/environment/2022/11/24/one-crop-uses-more-than-half

https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/editorial/2022/12/04/why-its-time-utah-buy-out

Snow water equivalent % of Normal