This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Valley rain and mountain snowfall will usher in a partly cloudy, mild winter weekend while temporarily dissipating pollution-trapping inversions along the Wasatch Front.
Russian poet Boris Pasternak once mused that such a forecast, "Makes all you see appear alive and new. Meanwhile, the shades of sky are growing lighter, beyond the blackest cloud the height is blue."
You can credit a weak cold front for the forecast the precipitation, which is expected to bring no more than a few inches of snow to elevations above 6000 feet by Saturday morning.
Anticipating the atmospheric scrubbing ahead, the Utah Division of Air Quality hoisted "green," or healthy air quality banners statewide going into this weekend. On Friday, most of the state had begun the day with mandatory air action advisories due to particulate pollution, meaning those with compromised health and the very young were urged to stay indoors, and motorists were asked to use mass transit rather than drive themselves.
The Salt Lake and Tooele valleys looked for Friday evening showers and daytime high temperatures in the mid-40s on Saturday. Overnight lows were to hover around 30 degrees.
It was to be almost springlike in southern Utah, however. Utah's Dixie had a forecast calling for upper-50s to low-60s on Saturday under partly cloudy skies. Overnight lows were to be in the upper-30s.
The Utah Avalanche Center as of Thursday morning rated the risk for potentially deadly backcountry snowslides at "moderate" for all the state's mountain ranges.
More extensive forecast information is available at the Tribune's weather page: http://www.sltrib.com/weather.
Twitter: @remims