textproduct: Salt Lake City

KEY MESSAGES

- Scattered showers with a few thunderstorms will impact northeastern portions of the forecast area early Thursday through Thursday afternoon.

- Locally elevated fire weather conditions will occur across far southern Utah Thursday afternoon and evening and could also develop for the southern half of the state Tuesday into Wednesday.

DISCUSSION

A broad ridge sits off the Pacific coast this evening with Utah and southwest Wyoming under a west to northwest flow on the front of it. A trough has dropped down from Canada into Idaho and Montana along the front of the ridge and is on track to slide across northeastern portions of the forecast area overnight into early Friday afternoon. Despite modest instability, moisture is looking limited with the system. Therefore, associated showers will tend to be on the weak side. The trough will, however, temporarily curb the warming trend over northern Utah. The Wasatch Front is expected to see little change in the highs between today and tomorrow, but points farther northeast like the Bear Lake area and southwest Wyoming should see highs up to 5F cooler than today.

As that trough exits, there is high confidence that the Pacific ridge will track east, bringing increasingly dry and mild conditions with generally light winds through Monday. By Monday, high temperatures will be quite unseasonably warm, running up to 15F above climo.

By Tuesday, the ridge is expected to have shifted east of the forecast area, opening Utah and southwest Wyoming up to a cooler and more unsettled pattern though details regarding the troughs to come still look quite murky at this time.

REST OF UTAH AND SOUTHWEST WYOMING

A cold front will approach the area overnight, and shift southward through the northern terminals through the morning hours. For especially the further northern terminals, showers will accompany the front with an isolated thunderstorm or two possible. Winds will shift NW and become modestly gusty behind the front. Precipitation will start to clear up late morning to early afternoon. The front is not expected to make it to southern terminals before 00Z Fri, so those areas should see mostly clear to partly cloudy skies and diurnally normal winds.

FIRE WEATHER

An area of low pressure will shift across northern and eastern Utah overnight through Thursday afternoon, bringing scattered showers and thunderstorms to this portion of the state through Thursday evening. The chances of wetting rain across this area look low, however. Across southern Utah, very dry conditions will continue with occasional gusts up to 25 mph or so, bringing localized areas of elevated fire weather conditions to mainly the Grand Staircase and Color Country mountains areas.

As low pressure pulls away from the area Thursday evening, a warming and drying trend will continue through the holiday weekend. Expect high temperatures up to 15F above normal Sunday and Monday. With very dry conditions during the day, overnight recoveries will become increasingly poor during this period.

A return to unsettled conditions is looking increasingly likely for Tuesday into Wednesday. With continued critically low humidities across much of the region, increasing winds could bring the threat of locally critical fire weather conditions to much of southern Utah Tuesday and Wednesday.

SLC WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

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