This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated.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.
"Call out the instigator, because there's something in the air," Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers might wail, seeing the gray pall thickening over northern Utah's urban valleys.
The instigators in this case? A foul, lung-singeing union of warm air aloft, cold air near the surface, vehicular exhaust, and industrial and solid-fuel burning furnace and stove emissions that have the Wasatch Front's air quality on the slide as the week comes to an end.
The Utah Division of Air Quality began Thursday with Salt Lake, Davis, Weber and Utah counties under "yellow" or moderate air quality designations. By Friday, Box Elder, Cache and Tooele counties, too, will see degraded breathing conditions — and that trend is expected only to worsen through the weekend.
No major storms are on the horizon to break up the inversions and scrub the air of particulates until well into next week: a ridge of high pressure moving into the region from the east will keep the atmosphere tainted in the meantime.
The hack is back. But if you can endure it, the state's weather is rather mild for this time of year. As on Thursday, the northern Wasatch Front is due a mix of sunshine and clouds on Friday, with high temperatures in the mid- to upper-30s and lows in the low- to mid-20s.
Southern Utahns will deal with the wind. Gusts up to 35 mph were forecast as daytime highs climbed into the low-50s under sunny skies on Thursday. Friday was to be calmer, and highs will be in the mid-50s.
Lack of fresh snowstorms may not help air quality, but at least the risk for potentially deadly backcountry snowslides lessened. The Utah Avalanche Center's risk assessment was "low" for all state mountain areas on Thursday, with the exception of the Uintas and Moab districts, which were "moderate."
For more extensive forecast information, visit the Tribune's weather page at http://www.sltrib.com/weather.
Twitter: @remims