About Five Feet of Snow Since Christmas: Winter Returns to Utah's Ski Resorts
It’s been a dry, agonizing start for Utah’s ski resorts and skiers, but the New Year is showing promise with local mountains reporting feet of snow during the last days of 2025 and the opening of 2026.
In November, a slew of ski resorts across the state delayed their opening dates, including Deer Valley, Alta Ski Area, and Solitude Mountain Resort.
The next month, Alta Ski Area saw about 45 inches of snow, roughly two feet lower than the December total during the 2024-25 season. The comparison to the record-breaking 2022-23 season is more stark: that year, 163 inches of snow fell in December at Alta Ski Area.
This latest storm cycle, however, has delivered a welcome change of course. KSL meteorologist Matthew Johnson pegged the Alta Ski Area snow total since Christmas at roughly five feet.
In a social media post, the ski area wrote, “Call off the silver alert, Old Man Winter has been found.” Alta Ski Area followed that post with tantalizing photos of powder skiing. See below.
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Alta Ski Area’s Little Cottonwood Canyon neighbor, Snowbird, also fared well, tallying 43 inches of snow in the past week.
Deer Valley and Park City Mountain tend to see lower snow totals than Utah’s powder headliners, but they, too, benefited from the storm. Deer Valley picked up 18 inches in three days. Thirty-one inches of snow fell at Park City Mountain during a seven-day period. “Hello Winter, glad you could join us,” the ski resort wrote in a social media post.
More snow is on the way this week. Alta Ski Area, among other areas near Salt Lake City, is under a National Weather Service Winter Weather Advisory through Thursday night. The agency expects a foot or more of snow at the mountain, followed by a stretch of cool and clear weather.
Despite the exciting return of soft snow and cold temperatures, the pause in precipitation could stick around for a while.
Chris Tomer, a meteorologist favored by skiers, is forecasting a dry spell for Utah between January 10 and January 16. Other ski resorts, in Colorado and British Columbia, though, could see significant snowfall totals in this period.