Above-average snowfall during January has its good, bad side

Lindi Brown shovels snow away from her car so she can drive it Friday morning in Logan. (Eli Lucero/Herald Journal)

By Tyler Riggs

Published:

Saturday, February 2, 2008 2:59 AM CST

January 2008 won’t go down as the snowiest month on record, but if you ask any of the thousands of Cache residents who were put in charge of home snow removal last month, they’ll tell you there was enough of the white stuff.

“Almost every morning it seems there was another storm,” said Clint Martin, who was using a snowblower to clear the driveway of his Logan home Friday morning. “I know we need the water, but gosh, I’m about tired of it.”

Ask around this time of year and a lot of people will agree with Martin when it comes to snow: “We need it the water, but we’re ready for spring.”

But if you thought there was more snow than normal last month, you’re right. The average amount of snow in Cache Valley for January is 12.1 inches, said Utah Climate Center Meteorologist Alan Moller, but last month Logan received about 27 inches.

While that’s quite a ways off of the January record of 43.7 inches that fell in 1949, it’s a lot more than many residents are used to.

“Comparing it to last year, we had a monthly total of 6.7 inches,” Moller said. “Last year was a bit drier.”

As for the entire snow season so far, which runs from September through April? Northern Utah is looking pretty good. According to numbers from the Utah Snow Survey, which measures the percent of water in the mountain watersheds, the Bear River Basin is at about 98 percent of average snowpack.

Comparing this snow season to last year, Moller said, Cache Valley is looking great. So far this snow season, the valley has received 53.3 inches of snow — 10 more than the valley saw the entire 2006-07 season.

“That’s helping out the water year quite a bit,” Moller said.

There may be relief from the snow on the horizon, Moller said, but not before another storm hits the valley starting Sunday.

“Right now there’s hints of maybe some high pressure ridging that could kind of give us a break from the storms later next week,” Moller said. “We’ve just been hit with the storm that we’ve had and it’s stuck around since December.”

Rumors of a change in weather patterns won’t keep Martin from fueling his snowblower, however.

Said Martin: “I wish it’d warm up, but I’m not putting this thing away until I can see my grass again.”