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SALT LAKE CITY — Punxatawney Phil saw his shadow this week at Gobbler's Knob, which traditionally means he heads back into hibernation and the rest of us get six more weeks of winter.
But meteorologists say his 30 to 40% accuracy rate doesn't put the odds in Utah's favor. We've had a mild and dry time of it.
KSL meteorologist Kevin Eubank says we've had our warmest January in nine years, with 15 days in the 40s and only two in the 20s.
"In Salt Lake City, we average 12.5 inches of snow in January. But we've only had 6 inches of valley snow. That's pitiful," Eubank says.
Eubank says that’s the least amount of valley snow in 12 years.
But he says scattered showers for the valleys this week can be good, so long as they translate into mountain snow. That's where the water needs to be.
"We don't get our water supply from the valleys, we get it from the mountains," Eubank says, "So it's critical we replenish the water supply in our mountains."
Eubank says it would be good to get more of those designer storms, where it snows in the mountains but you don't have to shovel that much.
