"Normal" Spring to Continue

As far as Aprils go, this one hasn't been too exciting or unusual from a weather standpoint.  For the first 19 days of the month, the average temperature was 48.9˚F, which would rate as the 46th warmest or 45th coolest out of 92 years of record keeping at the Salt Lake City International Airport. 

Source: NOAA Regional Climate Centers

In other words, we are right at the median, or the middle of the distribution of past Aprils.  I don't say this much, but that's "normal" or as close to it as you can get. 

If one were to quibble, it might be with regards to precipitation as the Airport has only had 0.26 inches of rain so far, which would be below average.  Still, I would rate this April as fairly typical and not all that unusual. 

The short-range forecast also looks like typical spring.  Highs in the 60s today over northern Utah with some showers and thunderstorms in central and southern Utah.  Tomorrow looks like more of the same, then a dry Wednesday before we have a spring front move in to give us some precipitation Wednesday night and Thursday with valley rain and upper elevation snow.  Below is the GFS forecast valid 1200 UTC (0600 MDT) Thursday showing the system as it moves through northern Utah.  700-mb (crest-level) temperatures are near -2˚C, which means fairly high snow levels with high-density snow at upper elevations. 

We normally look at forecast plumes for Alta-Collins, but we shift today for the gardeners out there and look at rainfall amounts for the Salt Lake City airport.  Our downscaled SREF product generates  from 0.05 to 0.5" of precipitation, with an average of 0.15."

I'm hoping for 0.4".  After a few dry days, a good soak would be nice.