Atmospheric river to keep pushing rain, snow into Utah after solid New Year storm
Jan 3, 2026, 6:00 AM
A sign for the canyon traction law is displayed at the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon in Cottonwood Heights on Dec. 27. An active pattern of rain and snow remains in Utah's forecast for next week after a productive New Year's storm. (Isaac Hale, Deseret News)
(Isaac Hale, Deseret News)
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah’s 2026 water year opened with a bang, with Utah’s capital city nearly breaking its all-time single-day precipitation record a few days into the new season.
The same went for the start of the calendar. The New Year’s storm proved to be quite productive for many of Utah’s ski resorts, delivering over a foot of snow at Alta, Brighton, Snowbird and Solitude resorts in the Cottonwood canyons, while many other resorts scattered across northern Utah reported over a half-foot of new snow.
Many cities also received strong precipitation totals that lingered into Friday, and there’s more on the way. The state’s snowpack rose a bit, from 57% of normal at the start of Thursday to 61% by mid-Friday.
“We still have a ways to go, but the good news is we have a stormy weather pattern that will give us several days in a row to get more mountain snow going,” said KSL meteorologist Kristen Van Dyke.
A stormy week ahead
A high-pressure system is briefly setting back over the Utah-Nevada border as the New Year’s storm continues moving east, but it will be quickly pushed out by an atmospheric river moving its way across the Pacific Coast. It will produce widespread showers across the West on Saturday, before arriving in Utah late Saturday and early Sunday, Van Dyke said.
It will produce rain in the valleys and snow in the mountains that continues in waves on Sunday and Monday. It’s expected to clear out by Tuesday, but another system could impact Utah on Wednesday and Thursday.
Van Dyke points out that there’s still plenty of uncertainty about how the latter system will impact Utah based on different scenarios, but early models suggest that it could be cold enough to produce valley snow.
Potential accumulations
It’s still too early to know how that will translate into storm totals, but the start looks promising. Several Wasatch Mountain sites could wind up with over another foot of snow by Monday evening, according to a National Weather Service model updated on Friday.
Although probabilities can change, it lists places like Alta and Brighton have a 28% to 33% chance of collecting another 1½ feet of snow. Lower totals are expected in Utah’s central and southern mountains, while the Wasatch Back could receive a few inches of snow.
The weather service notes there’s some chance for valley snow in the first round of action, but it’s low, and there likely won’t be much accumulation if there is any. That’s because high temperatures will remain in the upper 40s and low 50s across the Wasatch Front and northern Utah this weekend, with overnight lows likely hovering above the freezing point in most areas.
However, the storm has the potential to produce another 0.5 to 1.1 inches of rain across the Wasatch Front and northern Utah by Monday evening, per the weather service. Lower totals, likely closer to 0.1 inches, are forecast for central and southern Utah communities, like Beaver, Cedar City, Fillmore and St. George.
Those totals could change as the storm nears, and they don’t account for precipitation later in the week. Full seven-day forecasts for areas across Utah can be found online, at the KSL Weather Center.
