hunker down

We got a very exciting storm across Utah, starting Friday afternoon, through the overnight and moving out Saturday morning.  Amazingly, it was almost all in the mountains, dropping several inches of very wet, slushy snow in the valley before getting hung up in the higher elevations and just nuking up there.  Here are the storm totals (thanks to WSF, who has an in-depth analysis of the storm and the current snowpack):



The other thing this wonderful storm left behind was wickedly cold temperatures.  So cold, in fact, that we did not go up skiing on Saturday.  When we got up, Alta was reporting a -15 F mid mountain temperature, with brutal windchill in the forecast, and with all the new snow, they would have very limited terrain open.  We've skied in 0 degree weather before and it's tough; I have to go in to warm my fingers and toes every couple of runs, even with hand-warmers, and frostbite is a real concern.  From our vantage point, the canyon looked socked in and we made the call to stay inside instead.  I wasn't even tempted to go for a run as temperatures only got into the 20s in the valley.

The day wasn't a total loss.  We got the Christmas stuff out and worked on Christmas cards and I packaged up some homemade cookies to hand out at work.  I also dug out all my warmest layers and laid them out.  Sunday we would ski no matter what.