What a day yesterday and what a morning this morning.
As anticipated, a very juicy airmass moved into Utah this week. The 5-day time-series from the airport shows the gradual increase of dewpoint and decrease of temperatures from July 29th to August 1st. Then, dewponts really jumped on the night of the 1st, reaching 65˚F and ultimately hitting 70˚F during the day yesterday. They have remained at or above 60˚F since about midnight on the 2nd.
Yesterday, a powerful squall line moved northward through western Utah and ultimately through the Salt Lake Valley in the afternoon. The loop below shows the system moving northward and illustrates how the National Weather Service tracks these storms and updates warnings accordingly.
Utahn's don't see this much, but a good example of how @NWSSaltLakeCity continuously tracks and updates severe thunderstorm warnings pic.twitter.com/Egjv1cjh4Y
— Jim Steenburgh (@ProfessorPowder) August 2, 2023
The 70°F dewpoint is probably near the upper end of what you'll see at KSLC, although I don't have a database here to confirm that. It may be just shy of a record, but I'm speculating.
Precipitation was fairly widespread in the Salt Lake Valley, with a lot of variability in amounts consistent with the convective nature of the storm. The highest total reported to the NWS so far is 2.62" in West Valley City (through 4:50 AM). Lower amounts are generally around 0.2".
For the standard-time calendar day yesterday (August 2nd), KSLC reported 1.31" of precipitation. That rates as the 16th highest calendar day total during the July to September monsoon period.
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| Source: https://xmacis.rcc-acis.org/ |
All time, it is a less impressive #38 as there are a number of heavy precipitation events that have occurred during the fall, winter, or spring that also pip it. Salt Lake City actually has a remarkably divers extreme precipitation climatology with events in every month in the top 50.
I had a wonderful stroll into the office this morning in light rain with the umbrella raised. Enjoy this cool, moist weather.
Your summer blogging really is my favorite. Monsoon in Salt Lake is so delightful, thx for the empirical discussion, more better. This morning was heavenly two layers upper, sweats, cold bare feet coffee on the porch 7am drizzle. In terms of pure weather, absolute fav, though deep cold smoke pow is the addiction.
ReplyDeleteInteresting and terrifying how warm the July nights were. Last night was blessed.
NOW! is the time to begin preparing to PRAY for MORE SNOW, LESS WIND, and LOWER WETBULBZERO w VERY MANY ICE NUCLEATING PARTICLES for the impending winter foreshadowed by cool August 3 monsoon
MMMM… Juicy airmass…
ReplyDeleteIts been a weird monsoon season. The biggest issue was the 1-month delay of the monsoon, thanks largely to the rapidly developing El Nino conditions slowing the development of the semi-permanent summertime 4-Corners High, which is necessary to remain in place for a prolonged period of time to get the monsoon train rolling. Perhaps this delay acted to springload the moisture stronger than before. You had mentioned seeing 70 deg dewpoints up here, being an oddity...as this monsoon surge was developing down in Baja Mexico area, there were some 80 degree dewpoints, and the GFS model even strung up an unusually long area of 80 deg dewpoints, which I never remember seeing before. So yes, I guess extremes beget extremes. But this monsoon cycle is short-lived as it split in 2 already, the main part snapping back south into Mexico and the northern part that hit us drifted into ID/WY where its now being ingested into the main westerlies. So overall on a regional scale, its been a below normal monsoon season for the SW US and continues to be so.
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