textproduct: Salt Lake City

KEY MESSAGES

- High pressure will bring historically warm weather for March by the middle of the upcoming week, with temperatures approaching 30F above seasonal normals continuing into the first part of the upcoming weekend.

DISCUSSION

Morning water vapor loop shows an expansive ridge building along the Pacific coast. On the eastern periphery of this ridge, the local forecast area is seeing moisture stream through overhead, and in turn mostly cloudy skies. Strong 300 mb and 500 mb winds are also noted overhead, translating to some enhanced ridgetop winds at some of our mountain locations. This strong flow may also help to squeeze out a couple light showers in the high northern terrain, though nothing of real substance. Otherwise, only forecast element of note today will be some modest wind gusts downstream of areas in the western Uinta Basin, Castle Country, and lower Washington County. High temperatures today will run near to around 10F above seasonal normal, though for most locations this will be the "coolest" day of the next week.

Moving into the week the robust ridge strengthens, slowly shifts east, and becomes more centered atop the Desert Southwest. This ridge will peak with 700 mb temperatures around +11C to +14C, and mid level height anomalies around +25 dam to +30 dam. Locally, this will result in a dry and stable period of weather with increasingly warm temperatures. As early as Tuesday widespread forecast highs around 10F to 20F above seasonal normal are expected, pushing further to 20F to 30F above seasonal normal as the week continues. To put it mildly, widespread record breaking temperatures are pretty much a certainty, and many records will be broken by impressive, if not historic margins. The one potential limiting factor would be if the strong stabilizing influence of the ridge could mute daytime mixing, given we still have a mid- March sun angle... But even then, don't believe it would be sufficient to really mute the anomalous heat all that much.

Around the Sunday to Monday time frame, models tend to support the northern jet starting to sink back south a bit, helping to flatten and shift the ridge. Moisture looks to be fairly limited at this time, so for now would anticipate most locations to remain dry, but see a slight downward trend to the previous week's heat. Some ensemble members hint at maybe a bit more moisture returning later on in the week, but there is not too much consistency/agreement this far out.

REST OF UTAH AND SOUTHWEST WYOMING

VFR conditions and diurnal winds are expected through the TAF period. CIGS across northern Utah will remain in the 5-7 KFT range through most of the afternoon, before gradually scattering out this evening.

SLC WATCHES/WARNINGS/ADVISORIES

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