Summary:

Warm and windy on Friday and Saturday.  Much cooler Sunday with a chance for high elevation snow in Northern Utah.

Details:

Trough is currently pushing into the Pacific Northwest.  That has been kicking up our winds already in a southwest flow.  Expect warm and windy conditions to continue through Saturday evening.

Cold front is going to move into the area on Saturday night. Sunday we should see periods of a few showers but both the GFS and EC have been trending much drier with the system with most of the cold air and energy staying to our north.  Right now I'd say 1-4" of snow will be possible above 7,000 feet, mostly north of I-80.

We clear out on Monday with seasonably cool temps in the wake of Sunday's system.  High pressure will build over the area.  Another trough will move into the Pacific Northwest.  It looks like this trough will clip us about Wednesday of next week with clouds and breezes and perhaps a few showers for far northern Utah.  Ridging will then build in after this system.  Right now it looks like a dry and mild Halloween.

Long range:

It looks like a strong cut-off low will form off the California coast next week.  Cut-off Lows are extremely hard to predict as the are "cut-off" from the main flow and therefore have limited steering.  I think eventually this Low will track east into the western states, but at this point it is very hard to know where it will end up.  If things go our way, we could end up seeing a decent system during the first week of November.  But right now that's a big "IF".   Ensembles generally keep the area free from prolonged ridging... That's the good news... now we just need something concrete and promising to show up in the long range models.

Evan | OpenSnow