Happy holidays! Today, I come bearing the gift of a generally positive snow forecast, and perhaps, if we have been extra good this year, a white Christmas as well. If you have been reading this column so far this season, or if you have happened to step (or even look) outside over the past month, then you likely noticed that snow has been harder to come by than in most other years. In fact, Park City (Thaynes Canyon) presently sits at only 42% of median snowpack for the date. Credit: OpenSnow.comIt is tough sledding (literally) for skiers, snowboarders and snow lovers. It has also been a difficult start for operations teams at Park City Mountain Resort and Deer Valley Resort, where open terrain remains somewhat limited. While we have been able to get a large quantity of lifts and trails open, off-piste skiing remains close to impossible in many areas. Things will be changing this week, starting with a storm moving in on Christmas Eve into early Christmas morning. This system will push into Utah from the west and, as it does so, will lose quite a bit of energy as it splits and weakens. Still, there should be enough remaining energy for at least several inches of accumulation in the mountains for Christmas Day and an inch or two likely in town. A good chance to wake up to a white Christmas for us on the Wasatch Back!Beyond Christmas, additional storm systems are likely to pass through the region Thursday through Saturday, bringing periods of snow. While none of these waves are particularly strong on their own, the cumulative effect should be accumulating snow for the Wasatch mountains. A final system is possible around Dec. 30 that should close out the calendar year with a bit more snow.How much snow are we going to get over the next week? Well, the answer to that largely depends on just how much strength these storm systems can maintain as they move east. Last week, I discussed the battle royale of ridge and trough. Again, we can clearly see that battle when we look at model-forecast precipitation totals over the next week. Credit: OpenSnow.comNotice the impressive totals along the West Coast, as well as in the Cascades and Sierra Nevada, nearer to the parent trough in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Then, there is a considerable decline in expected precipitation as you move east toward Utah and Colorado, toward the large ridge of high pressure over continental North America.At OpenSnow, we blend weather models and apply our own algorithm in order to forecast both total precipitation and expected snowfall. Our OpenSnow forecast algorithm shows 1.6” of water equivalent at Deer Valley over the next week.Credit: OpenSnow.comWhen we apply our dynamic snow-to-liquid ratios to this forecast, we see that it equates to roughly 18” of snow.Credit: OpenSnow.comWhile roughly a foot and a half of snow over seven days is far from the big storms we need to catch us up to average, it should help considerably to get terrain open. There is also a chance these storms could do better than models currently indicate and we see higher totals. Finally, let’s look at this from a practical standpoint. As a skier/snowboarder, the upcoming week will feature periods of snow. While the accumulations are generally going to be light over any single 24-hour period, the aggregate total by the end of the week could be quite good. If you are like me — desperately trying to find the highest chance for powder — Friday and Saturday are probably your best bets. While I will wait until next week to get into any details, I am starting to see signs that we could see additional, perhaps colder, storms during the first week of January. While confidence in this is low at this point, it does give me hope that we may be able to make further progress in building a more typical mid-winter snowpack. Until next time, have a very merry (and hopefully snowy) holiday week! For up-to-date forecasts, you can subscribe to Evan’s Utah Daily Snow forecast on OpenSnow.com and the OpenSnow app. The post The Outlook: A white Christmas may yet land with Santa, fingers crossed appeared first on Park Record.