wild weather

In the interest of full disclosure, I had to go back east last week.  While I was there, I missed some seriously crazy winter weather.  On Monday, a monster snowstorm dropped around nineteen inches in the Salt Lake Valley, making a real mess for any commuters who couldn't work from home, but only brought seven inches to the mountains.  That's not the way it's supposed to go!

And then on Thursday, an even nastier system - with very wet, heavy, dense snow - lodged itself in Little Cottonwood Canyon, forcing both Alta and Snowbird to shut down operations for two days and putting folks on interlodge for 52 hours.  The avalanche danger was immense: one natural slide came across the canyon road at Snowbird Entry 1, burying it in nine feet of snow; we saw videos circulating of another natural slide that came off Superior, crossed the road and inundating cars parked at the Peruvian and Alta's Wildcat base.  Update:  here's Alta's description of the historic event.

After a heroic effort by resort staff, UDOT and the Utah Avalanche team, the Little Cottonwood Canyon road reopened Saturday midday, but then UDOT closed the road again due to traffic congestion, as everyone in the valley tried to go skiing.  Even Big Cottonwood Canyon, which didn't get quite as much snow, nor does it have the high avalanche danger as its neighbor to the south, got shut down for traffic congestion as frustrated LCC skiers attempted to go to Solitude and Brighton instead.

For all the drama and hubbub, snow totals in the mountains didn't exactly skyrocket.  The state's overall snowpack is looking decent though, as we head into the back half of the ski season: