Utah Snowpack 2017 - 1 April Edition

Utah Snowpack in our mountains continues to pile on as the season nears closing.  Some of the snow totals indicated by Snotel monitoring are quite prodigious.

The Mammoth-Cottonwood monitoring site on the Sanpete Skyline has been my reference point since I lived near there, starting 15 years ago.  This graph plots Snow Water Equivalent and Precipitation Accumulation for 2017 and 1016.  Indication is that although significant snow melt has already started this spring, the accumulation amounts to about twice as much as last year at this time. A spring melting trend started about mid-March, but was then halted in the last week of March with an upward trend from new spring snow.  More than two feet of snow water equivalent remains to run off.  The steep rise of precipitation accumulation continues as it compares with last year's data.

This comparative graph from the South West corner of Utah shows tracking for Gardner Peak, which is still significantly ahead of last year's accumulations, but not by much.  There has always been a great deal of local variation across the State of Utah.

This awesome plot compares Snow Water Equivalent from the Mammoth Pass area of central California.  Every indication is that California with simply wash into the ocean with the spring runoff, which has not even commenced at this location.  The Snow Water Equivalent is more than twice the maximum from last year, and shows no sign of slacking off yet this year.  The current snow pack will yield more than six FEET of water when it melts.

We are not embarrassed by the huge snowfall accumulation in California.  In the Utah mountains north of Ogden, the station on Ben Lomond accumulated some of the highest totals.  An early meltdown reduced the total somewhat, but it still shows an enormous runoff potential, nearly as great as the California snow pack.

Get ready, 'cause here it comes!