Loving this Weather!

After a summer of heat, enjoy the weather this week.  We are in a magical place meteorologically with a deep midlatitude trough at upper levels and monsoon moisture at low levels.  Overnight (0900 UTC; 3 AM MDT) GFS forecasts show the upper-level trough centered just west of Boise (black contours) with monsoon moisture, indicated by the color precipitable water contours, streaming northward at low levels through Utah.  

This gives us instability, but also wind shear and large-scale forcing to help with precipitation generation and convective storm development.  

Additionally, there's also a surface front somewhere out there, although there's so much convection and precipitation out there, it's pretty chewed up and not easy to precisely locate.  

As I write this, the 1410 UTC (0810 MDT) radar shows a broad area of precipitation over Salt Lake, Summit, and Wasatch Counties, with scattered showers and thunderstorms elsewhere.  

You don't see many soundings around here like the one from the airport this morning.  We see many "inverted V" soundings around here in which cloud bases are elevated and below them the sounding features an inverted V with an increasing difference between the temperature and dewpoint as you go down to the ground.  Today, instead, we have a moist mixed layer at low levels and drier air at mid levels.  This is the type of sounding one sees more commonly in the eastern US as a cold-front approaches.

Due to the threat of heavy rainfall and potential for flash flooding, the National Weather Service has issued a Flash Flood Watch for much of Utah.  They also issued a hazardous weather outlook that emphasizes the potential for heavy rainfall, flash flooding, hail, and gusty winds near storms.  And, just for fun, you might like this:

"Elevations above around 10,000 feet may see a changeover to snow for a time tonight behind a cold front."  

Music to my ears.

Monitor forecasts, warnings, special weather statements and the like at https://www.weather.gov/slc/.