textproduct: Salt Lake City

KEY MESSAGES

- Valley inversions look to persist across our northern UT valleys through Tuesday at the earliest. Some weakening is expected which may improve air quality somewhat.

- Cooler air aloft gradually moves in late Tuesday into Wednesday, perhaps cooling enough to lift inversions somewhat (~60% of ensemble members support this).

- The light at the end of the tunnel persists with a potential system ushering in the return of precipitation to the region Thursday/Friday. High uncertainty remains in place regarding this setup.

DISCUSSION

An upper ridge remains centered over CA extending NW to SE reinforcing the NNW flow pattern we have started to know quite well. Strong longwave troughing with its axis extending into the Southern Plains will slowly progress east with time, enabling height rises across the Desert Southwest clocking flow to more northwesterly aloft later this evening. Within this flow, a transient midlevel impulse looks to build over the eastern Great Basin serving to raise temperatures tomorrow which may help mix out inversion conditions somewhat across our northern UT valleys.

While inversion conditions look to persist through midweek, some improvement does appear possible with cooler air gradually streaming into the area via northwesterly flow. This is expected to be a gradual process with non-instantaneous improvement, and it should lift the inversion higher through Wednesday potentially improving air quality somewhat. By late Tuesday evening, roughly 60% of ensemble guidance holds onto this solution with an associated impulse (and cold front) pushing into the area from the north. This may potentially scour out even more of the inversion by Wednesday. While it may not entirely improve the air across the region, it should help somewhat until the upper air pattern ramps up again this weekend.

Regarding this weekend, the upper air pattern becomes somewhat chaotic as we draw closer to the end of the work week. The majority of long range guidance indicates that a northern stream trough will impact the PNW this weekend with a southern stream trough pushing into the Desert SW. Split flow regimes tend to lead toward quite a large amount of uncertainty with ensemble cluster analysis indicating a roughly 50/50 chance of at least 0.01" of precipitation across northern UT through Sunday. Conditions will continue to be monitored through the coming week, and hopefully we will soon see a pattern shift take hold across the region.

REST OF UTAH AND SOUTHWEST WYOMING

VFR conditions will likely persist for the entire airspace through the period. Dry conditions with clear skies will continue with subtle haze from inversions across northern valleys. There is less than a 30% chance of fog developing across northern valleys overnight. Otherwise, winds will be light and diurnally driven.

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SLC WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

UT...None. WY...None.