Cache Valley • If you’re still holding out hope for a classic winter snowstorm here this season — complete with deep drifts and endless shoveling — experts warn it’s most likely not coming.
Jon Meyer, the assistant state climatologist at the Utah Climate Center, said weather patterns over the course of a season typically shift dramatically, sometimes week to week. However, this winter has been an exception, Meyer said, with weather patterns remaining strikingly consistent — consistently underwhelming in moisture.
Northern Utah has been just far enough south of this season’s major snowstorms that residents accustomed to the “Greatest Snow on Earth” have been left with only “glancing blows” that result in “nickel-and-dime” accumulations, Meyer said. He expects this pattern to persist for the rest of winter.
“Our expectations have kind of slipped from maybe more optimistic, bullish expectations,” Meyer said, “to pessimistic, bearish expectations for what our snowpack will continue to look like.”
For longtime Cache Valley residents, winters like these feel far removed from the ones they grew up experiencing, said Don Olson, founder of the popular Facebook group “Cache Valley Memories.” Many of Olson’s fondest memories — like those of other commenters on his page — were made in the snow. He recalls playing football with socks as mittens, tubing down Old Main Hill into hay bales to avoid sliding into the road, and ice skating daily at a neighborhood park with the rest of the community.
The snow, Olson said, brought people together in a way that feels absent today.
“We didn’t think twice about it,” he said. “It was like we’re always going to get snow here in Cache Valley. But lately, it seems like it’s just drying up.”
In northern Utah and across the state, the mountains have been experiencing shorter snow seasons in recent years, Meyer said. Cache Valley natives like Nancy Mahler have watched this change.
Mahler remembers snow beginning to fall as early as October, and trudging through it to go trick-or-treating. “As I look back now,” Mahler said, “it was magical to grow up in Logan.”
More recently, fall and early winter months have grown much warmer and drier compared to the rest of the year, Meyer added.
“For now, we’re going to kind of wishcast and remain optimistic that we can have a couple of events that are bigger and we can play some catch-up and end on a little bit more of a high note for the rest of winter,” he said. “We’ve got to be optimistic sometimes.”
Currently, Utah’s snowpack levels are at 79% of normal for this time of year, according to Utah Department of Natural Resources drought coordinator Laura Haskell. In the Bear River Basin, which encompasses Cache Valley, levels are at 86% of normal.
Haskell noted some residents may feel like this winter is falling short because the past two seasons were remarkably snowy. At this time last year, snowpack levels were 110% of normal, and the year before that, they reached 145%.
Still, Haskell said, there is good news: Utah’s reservoirs are healthy. Bear Lake, which is typically only about 32% full, is currently at 70% capacity, she said.
Another difference this season has been the disparity between high-elevation and low-elevation snowpack — the snow that accumulates in the valleys and is most noticeable to locals. This year, much of the snow has remained in the mountains, Haskell said.
“At my house in Salt Lake County,” she said, “I shoveled snow once so far this year. That’s very unusual.”
But in Utah, unusual has increasingly become the norm. Cache Valley locals like Lori Geisler remember when winters were anything but mild.
“The wind would make my eyes water,” Geisler said of her time walking to class at Utah State University, “and then my eyelashes would freeze together. It would take half the class period to thaw enough to finally take off my coat. Winters in Logan were long and cold. Most of my memories, however, are fond memories.”
