Wasatch Weather Weenies

I have something very exciting to show you.  High temperatures the past three days were below normal! Source: NWS Not only that, they were below 90ºF (89, 89, and 86).  Any day in July with a high temperature below 90 is a good day.   And, on top of that, we have another cool, showery day on tap today, with some action in the area even this morning.   Enjoy it while it lasts. 

Most of the Salt Lake Valley enjoyed an exciting afternoon yesterday as a series of strong thunderstorms moved through the area. As can be seen in the loop below, we were pretty fortunate (meteorologists like myself prefer consider it fortunate to be in bad weather).  There were storms to the south and storms to the north, but in the strip from Dugway to the Salt Lake Valley, we were the most active area. The storms generated an inch of rain in Riverton, which seems to be the big winner from this event. Here on the University of Utah campus, our weather station near the mouth of Red Butte Canyon recorded 0.37", which doesn't sound like much, but it fell in only 15 minutes, which is a pretty good rainfall rate for northern Utah.  Really most of that rain fell in about a 5-10 minute period that can be described as either heaven or hell depending on your perspective.  In addition to the heavy rain, winds gusted to 37 mph and the temperature dropped to 66ºF. Wi...

The loop below shows the large-scale flow changes that have brought a pleasurable return of more seasonable temperatures to Utah and the Intermountain West.  Note in particular the westward shift of the upper-level ridge that was previously parked over northern Utah to the northeast Pacific. Here's a closer look at the changes.  On June 29, the upper-level ridge and the highest temperatures at 700 mb (roughly 10,000 feet, color contours) were parked directly over Salt Lake City, resulting in a high temperature of 104ºF.  BTW, if you adjust that to sea level, you get a maximum of about 127ºF. This morning, however, the upper-level ridge is thankfully over the north Pacific and our 700-mb temperatures are about 8ºC lower. And, as a result, the National Weather Service forecast for the next few days is relatively pleasant.   Enjoy!

By Salt Lake City standards, dew points don't get much higher than they are this morning.  At the Salt Lake City airport, the dew point maxed out at 67ºF at 9:50 AM and is currently sitting at a muggy 65ºF. Nobody from the deep south will think much of this, but that's about as humid as it gets in Salt Lake City.  I don't know what the dew point records are for the Salt Lake City airport (pass them along if you know them), but I consider anything above 65ºF to be quite high and anything around 68ºF to be rare. Although the humidity is good for the skin, it makes things far more uncomfortable and renders evaporative coolers completely ineffective.  It does, however, look like our run of >90ºF days, which sits at 20, will come to an end today.

I feel quite disoriented this morning.  I awoke yesterday in Ketchikan, Alaska on a spectacular day.  Temperatures were comfortably in the 60s as we ferried across the Tongass Narrows to the airport. I arrived yesterday evening at the Salt Lake City airport to an apocalyptic scene.  What the hell did you do to Utah while I was gone?  Where are the green Avenues foothills?  The patches of high mountain snow?  I haven't been gone all that long, but the transformation is dramatic.   Much has gone on in the past week or two.  We've already spoken quite a bit about the June heat, but how about the air quality?  In Utah, we tend to think about wintertime inversions, but during the summer, our ozone can also become elevated.  Below is a time series of ozone levels on the University of Utah campus over the past 30 days.  Ozone is produced photochemically by the sun's ultraviolet radiation and shows a pronounced diurnal signal with...

No surprise here.  June 2015 spanked all previous Junes at the Salt Lake City Airport with a mean temperature of 77.5ºF.  That's 1.8ºF higher than the previous record holder, June 1988 (75.7ºF). Source: NOAA Regional Climate Centers And, in case you are wondering, Jan–June also came in as the hottest in the instrumented record with a mean temperature of 53.0ºF, topping 1934s 52.8ºF. Source: NOAA Regional Climate Centers And now onto July...

With the intense warmth of the past few days, this June is now in uncharted territory for the highest mean temperature in Salt Lake City. With one day remaining (today), the average temperature for June 2015 now sits at 77.1ºF, well ahead the record of 75.7ºF n June 1988. Source: NOAA Regional Climate Centers The overnight minimum was 77ºF and the high today is expected to once again eclipse 100, so the mean temperature for the month will increase further.  Although there's a slight chance of a thunderstorm today, which could lower the minimum temperature a bit below the 77ºF recorded this morning, it looks like we will obliterate the June temperature record.