It’s snowing in the Wasatch, and by the weekend, there could be as much as 19 inches of new snow.
Temperatures are dropping in Utah, and snowmakers at Brighton Resort are about to fire up the snow guns and take advantage. It looks like the ski area could open for business soon. But first, people need to keep off the mountain.
November is a popular time for uphill travel, particularly before the lifts start spinning. But the more people who are out on the mountain earning their turns, the more snow that has to be made to replace the lines already ridden. The folks at Brighton are trusting their locals with preserving that snow.
“We are headed into a period of time where we can make a bunch of snow which will allow us to get the resort open for you as soon as we can,” the resort’s Instagram post reads. “You have a part in this too since our uphill travel policy is now red which means we’re closed to uphill travel. It takes us less time to prepare our resort if everyone stays off the mountain trails as we get the resort ready. This goes a long way since soon you’ll see our snowcats working hard to prepare natural and man made snow.”
The Cottonwood Canyons Weather Dashboard reported 5 inches of snow overnight, increasing the total this week to 7 inches. There’s no new snow expected over the next couple of days, but images from the live cams showed that the Brighton Resort parking lot was coated in a thin layer of snow this morning, and a dozen or so cars in the parking lot.
The snowmaking window the resort mentioned is definitely here. The coldest air of the season has settled into the Cottonwood Canyons, and will stay there for the next 48 hours.
“Mid clouds will gradually thin throughout the day today, some stratus will remain tied to the terrain in northwest flow,” the report says. “Skies are expected to completely clear out on Thursday.” The next chance at snow seems like it will come Saturday night into Sunday morning, when the low temperature is around 22 degrees.
The good stuff is forecasted to land around Monday. Between 12 and 18 inches of snowfall is possible, while another 13 to 19 is in Tuesday’s forecast.
There’s still no word on an opening day just yet. Brighton didn’t shut down its operations until May 19 last season
