Salt Lake City, UT – After being teased with up to 44 inches of snow last month, autumn made an untimely return to Utah last week. Winter, however, is back in the Wasatch this week.nUp to two feet of last month’s snow remains on upper mountain slopes at Utah’s ski and snowboard resorts. A strong snowstorm is presently impacting the Wasatch Mountains, the first in a series of progressively colder Pacific storms that are set to impact Utah throughout the week, just in time for the start of the state’s ski and snowboard season.

Shortly after 10 a.m. this morning, the National Weather Service issued a Winter Storm Warning affecting Cottonwood Canyons, where 14 to 22 inches of snowfall is predicted by mid-day on Tuesday. Some mountain weather stations have already logged an inch of liquid precipitation, and snow is already mixing in with the rain at 5,000 feet on the benches east of Salt Lake City.

With snowfall this week expected to be measured in feet, not inches, both Brighton Ski Resort and Solitude Mountain Resort are in the midst of final preparations to launch their ski seasons in Big Cottonwood Canyon this Friday.

Many of the state’s other ski and ride resorts are expected to follow suit the following weekend, so the timing of this week’s storms is serendipitous, indeed.