Salt Lake City is a snowy place – it receives an average of 62.7 inches of snow per snow season. The highest snowfall recorded in a season was 117.3 inches in 1951-52, and the least was 16.6 inches in 1933-34. On average, snow begins to fall in Salt Lake City on November 6, and the average date of the last snowfall is April 18.
First and last beginnings and last endings
The first date snow fell in Salt Lake City was September 17 (1965); The last early start was October 22 (1995), a difference of more than a month.
There is a slightly smaller range of about three weeks for the start of the most recent snow season, the most recent beginning on Christmas Day (1943), and the sixth beginning on December 4 (1976).
The range of endings for the snow season (that is, the last day of the year that snow fell) was May 8 (1930) to May 24, 2010, a range of just over two weeks.
Predicting future weather events
Knowing the start and end ranges of snowfall for Salt Lake City, or any other ski region, is helpful in planning the trip. The data suggests, for example, that planning a ski vacation in the Salt Lake City area in December before it starts to snow is risky.
Still, there are outliers and even within a time range, substantial differences in the amount of snow available for skiing. The last two starts for the snow season occurred on Christmas Day, one in 1943 and the other in 1939. But the 1939 season began with only half an inch of snow. Therefore, the start date in 1939 is relatively meaningless for skiers. In 1943, on the other hand, on Christmas Day it hit Salt Lake with almost 6 inches of snow.
A long-time weather forecasting entity, the Farmers Almanac, has been delivering long-range forecasts for nearly two centuries and now claims to be 80 percent accurate. This is disputed by competent meteorologists like Jan Null of the Golden Gate Weather Service, who investigated the claim and concluded that the true figure was between 25 and 30 percent accurate. Put another way, according to Null, this particular long-range forecasting service is wrong more than two-thirds of the time. It really isn’t a great base for vacation planning.
While the Farmers’ Almanac’s refusal to reveal how it arrives at its forecasts has deepened skepticism from climate professionals, it is not a problem limited to the Farmer’s Almanac. Null’s view is that the reliability of any weather service forecasts, including forecasts from US government agencies, plummets beyond about seven days.
The bottom line here is that it is a good idea to see what the past snow situation has been in any ski area and then add at least a couple of weeks to the latest starting figures and subtract the same amount or more from last season. ending the snowfall figures.
Global warming
Another variable in the weather forecast situation that makes travel planning particularly changeable is global warming. Suffice it to say that analyzes by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration conclude that 2016 was the hottest year since record-keeping began in 1880.
How this will affect ski locations is unknown, but it has prompted the Salt Lake Tribune and Fox’s Salt Lake television affiliate to speculate that Utah’s ski industry could come to an end by the end of the century. This may or may not happen, but it suggests that conservative and careful travel planning in America’s ski regions will lower your chances of a disappointing ski vacation.
