August is off to a blistering start. Seven out of ten days to start the month with high temperatures above 100. Six days with low temperatures 70 or above including an 81 on August 9. The average temperature for the first 10 days of August at the Salt Lake City International Airport was 85.2°F, the second highest on record behind only 2024 (86.3°F).
Relief is coming, however, due to a subtle change in the large-scale pattern. The upper-level ridge that has been over us the past few days is weakening and sliding eastward slowly while troughing is developing along the Pacific Coast. The GFS forecast for 0000 UTC 14 August (1800 MDT Thursday) shows the trough along the Pacific Coast (red dashed line) with a plume of elevated integrated vapor transport streaming up the lower Colorado River Valley and into Utah (red arrow). A weak trough is also evident at 700 mb over central Nevada and far northwest Utah.
The net impact of these changes will be a decline in temperature, increase in relative humidity, and increasing coverage of showers and thunderstorms. These trends begin today when we should fall short of 100 for the first time in five days, and continue through the end of the work week with each day a little cooler with increasing odds of precipitation through Thursday.
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| NWS Forecast for Salt Lake City downloaded 8:35 AM MDT Thursday 11 Aug 2026 |
The low of 59 forecast for Thursday night and the high of 83 forecast for Friday would be the lowest temperatures we've seen since June 30th when the minimum was 54 and the maximum was 82.
Let's hope it verifies and that we see beneficial rains for the firefighting efforts.
Don't forget today is the the first day with acceptable air quality since the beginning of the month. My thoughts are with the firefighters all over the northern hemisphere.
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