It is starting to snow this morning in the Wasatch of northern Utah as a pre-frontal SW flow is providing enough moisture for the mountains to provide lift and generate snow. Here is the look at Alta just after 7am this morning with snow starting to fall steady:

It's been snowing for a bit longer up at Powder Mountain already and the road up there is already snow-covered:

Not much accumulation yet, much to my 3-year-old's dismay as he stands next to me right now demanding to watch our timelapses of the snow stakes. I told him to check back later today and he declared there will be "a hundred of snow". So there's your forecast, I guess...

We are expecting the snow to pile up today. Lighter this morning but getting heavy as the front pushes through this afternoon. Honestly, I had been saying that Friday is the safer bet with snow this week, but timing has been slowly moving earlier and I think I would try to ski today if you're ok with storm days. I think by this afternoon it should be very good!

As for amounts, the totals expected by tomorrow morning aren't overly impressive:

This is generally 0.4-0.9" in the upper elevations. That would mean 5-10" in general -- could be higher in the Cottonwoods. I'd expect it to be denser on bottom and getting fluffier later this afternoon as the front moves through and we get some cooler air. 

Friday should be a bit of a break but clouds will still be around and by later in the day we could see snow showers develop again in a SW flow ahead of the next trough. 

The next storm will bring additional waves of energy into the entire state this weekend. You can see this adding up in our OpenSnow forecast algorithm:

The green bars indicate periods of heaviest precip. We can see the peak on the far left for today. Then another peak late Friday night into Saturday morning. Then, consistent chances for snow Saturday night through Sunday night. In total, this brings over 2" of liquid over the next 5 days. 

From Friday PM - Monday AM, I'm expecting a general 1-2 feet of snow in the high elevations of northern Utah. A foot or more snow in mountains of SW Utah is also possible. 

Temperatures this weekend are going to be cool, but not cold. The good news is I don't expect it to be overly warm as we sometimes see in SW flow storms like this. Moderate density snow is expected for the most part. 

It's a nice way to close out March, which has been generally above-average across the board. 

We have a break Tuesday and Wednesday of next week at the very least. The Euro brings in the next storm as early as later on Thursday (April 4), but the GFS holds off until later on Friday (April 5). The AI ECMWF, which is new and has been fun to mess around with, shows a compromise of early Friday. 

Of note, these new AI or machine-learning models differ from traditional numerical models because instead of taking inputs and during calculations and physics to provide an output, they take inputs and compare to 50+ years of analogs (similar atmospheric conditions/results) and make a forecast based on that. So far, they've been impressive. I'm guessing some kind of mix of ML/AI models and numerical models is the future. 

Evan | OpenSnow