SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — Happy Sunday, Utah! After seeing a cold front that helped cool temperatures back to seasonable for today, we’ll see breezy conditions throughout the day before winds begin to diminish into the evening hours.
We’ll see high temperatures running about 5-10° below average through much of the Wasatch Front and Northern Utah. Highs will be in the mid to upper 40’s with SW Utah remaining a few degrees above average in the upper 60’s to low 70’s. Cloud cover will still linger but we’ll get some more sunshine compared to yesterday and we’ll see partly to mostly cloudy skies for Monday. While this cold front was a reminder that winter is still here, this will not be the case much longer as we head into the middle and end of the week with the first official day of Spring this Friday.
A strong ridge of high pressure will begin to build over the western United States; this ridge will begin to help temperatures rapidly warm up by the middle of the week with highs by Tuesday already warming into the low 70’s for Northern Utah and mid to upper 80’s into Southern Utah. This high pressure will help to keep any precipitation and cloud cover at bay, which will lead to sunshine throughout much of the week and into next weekend. By the end of the week, temperatures will run as much as 30° above average for some with highs in the 80’s for Northern Utah. As for Southern Utah and into the St. George area, we will be talking highs in the 90’s with St. George pushing 100° by Friday! There is no question that numerous records will be in jeopardy as high temperatures are forecasted to smash old records by more than just a few degrees!
These temperatures are unusually warm for March; these are temperatures we should be on average seeing around late May to early June! To put things into a historical sense, Salt Lake City has only ever reached 80° once on March 31st in 2012 with multiple 80°+ days forecasted by the end of the week and next weekend. As for St. George, our earliest recorded 95°+ day is April 12th which was set back in 1907. Even 100°+, the earliest recorded instance of St. George reaching that was April 25th set back in 1946! While temperatures as of now are forecasted to be a degree or two below 100° for St. George, it is not out of the question and just puts into perspective how early this warmth is and just how unusual it is…