Cool Change

With high temperatures this past weekend of 100 and 101 at the Salt Lake City International Airport, today's "cool change" is greatly appreciated.  As I write this at about 3:10 PM, the temperature at the airport is only 81 and it is looking likely that we won't even eclipse 90 today.  

Those long in the tooth might remember that Cool Change was a 70's hit for the Little River Band.

The Little River Band was from Australia, where the Cool Change is an actual meteorological phenomenon that produces dramatic temperature falls from oppressive summertime heat in southeast Australia.  

The current drop in temperature is perhaps not as large or dramatic as the Australian Cool Change, but we'll take it.  I addition, the extended forecast is actually a good one for early July, with persistent ridging upstream along the Pacific coast (e.g., GFS forecast valid 0000 UTC 7 July below) putting northern Utah in northwesterly flow.  

That's much better than the ridge being parked over us or over the four corners.  As a result, forecast highs for the airport from the National Weather Service are very pleasant this "work" week:

Tuesday: 83
Wednesday: 88
Thursday: 84
Friday: 89

Thursday is the Fourth of July, so this week is broken up for many by the holiday.  84 would be wonderful.  If you are wondering, the lowest maximum temperature observed on the Fourth of July in Salt Lake City was...wait for it...62 in 1902.  I thought that would be as much of a black swan outlier as you'll find in early July (the next lowest maximum on the Fourth of July is 72 in 1993 and 1912), but on the previous day (July 3, 1902) the high was only 58 with 0.45" of rain! 

Someone needs to go back and see if that really happened.