The Utah Snow and Avalanche Workshop starts tonight. Presenters will be talking over the next three nights on lots of different topics regarding avalanche safety.
Current Conditions: The recent snow storm from Nov 8th and 9th dropped a little more than a foot of snow in the high country of the Manti Skyline. This snow basically fell on bare ground. There was a very small amount of snow on the highest most due north facing slopes from a small storm in late October. At this point, there are no weak layers of snow. This is subject to change depending on future weather patterns. It is a crucial time in the season when the early season shallow layers of snow are very susceptible to "faceting" and turning into weak sugar snow. This happens during longer periods with no storms. So, now that there is snow on the ground, we need it to keep coming. This will help build a deep, strong and stable snowpack.
Mountain Weather:
The big picture is that the weather pattern for the next couple of weeks continues to look fairly active. The next storm system moves through on Wednesday although it will stay north of our region. The next chance for snow on the Skyline is this weekend when the next system will move through. Unfortunately, at this time it looks like most of the moisture will remain to our north. We may see a few inches though. After that, there are more storm systems lined up and we'll just have to wait and see how they shape up for our region. While I don't see a whole lot of snow in our immediate future, there is not a huge ridge of high pressure that is going to set in.
