Will Cache Valley get a big blizzard this year? Experts say not to trust it.

Cache Valley • If you still keep hoping for a classic winter’s blizzard here this season – complete with deep operation and endless shovels – experts warn that it probably won’t come.

Jon Meyer, assistant state climate at the Utah Climate Center, said weather patterns over a season that typically changes dramatically, sometimes week to week. However, this winter has been an exception, Meyer said, with weather patterns that remain strikingly consistent – consistently in moisture.

Northern Utah has been just far enough south of this season’s great blizzard that the residents who are used to the “biggest snow on the ground” have only been “to see blows” that results in “nickel-and-dime”- Connections, Meyer said. He expects this pattern to continue for the rest of the winter.

“Our expectations are kind of slippery from perhaps more optimistic, bullish expectations,” said Meyer, “to pessimistic, Bearish expectations of what our snowpack will continue to look.”

For many years of cache valley residents feel winters like these far away from those they grew up to experience, said Don Olson, founder of the popular Facebook group “Cache Valley Memories.” Many of Olson’s girlfriend memories – like those from other commentators on his side – were made in the snow. He is reminiscent of playing football with socks like mittens, turning off Old Main Hill in hay bales to avoid sliding in the road and skating daily in a neighborhood kick with the rest of the community.

The snow, Olson said, brought people together in a way that feels absent today.

“We didn’t think about it twice,” he said. “It was as if we always get snow here in the Cache Valley. But recently it seems that it just dries up. “

In northern Utah and all over the state, the mountains have experienced shorter snow seasons in recent years, Meyer said. Natives in Cache Valley as Nancy Mahler has seen this change.

Mahler remembers that snow began to fall as early as October and trample through it to go trick-or-treatment. “When I look back now,” Mahler said, “it was magical to grow up in Logan.”

Recently, autumn and early winter months have become much warmer and drier compared to the rest of the year, Meyer added.

“For now we have to kind of Wishcast and remain optimistic that we can have a few events that are bigger and we can play some catching up and ending up a little more of a high note for the rest of the winter,” he said. “We sometimes have to be optimistic.”

Currently, Utah’s snowpack levels are 79% of normal for this time of year, according to the Utah Department of Natural Resources dry coordinator Laura Haskell. In the Bear River Basin, which includes the cache Valley, the levels of 86% of the normal are.

Haskell noted that some residents may feel that this winter is falling short because the last two seasons were remarkably snowy. At this time last year, snowpack levels were 110% of normal and the year before they reached 145%.

Still, said Haskell, there is good news: Utah’s reservoirs are healthy. Bear Lake, which is typically only approx. 32% full, is currently at 70% capacity, she said.

Another difference this season has been the difference between the snowpack with high height and low altitude that accumulates in the valleys and is most noticeable to the locals. This year much of the snow has been in the mountains, Haskell said.

“In my house in Salt Lake County,” she said, “I shed snow once so far this year. It is 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 his time going to the class at Utah State University, “and then my eyelashes freeze. It would take half the class period to thaw enough to finally take off my coat. Winter in Logan was long and cold. However, most of my memories are fond memories. “