This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Alexander Pushkin could pen this Utah forecast of bright, clear, chilly days, a midweek of "cold frost and sunshine: day(s) of wonder . . . the snow below the bluish skies, like a majestic carpet lies."
Evocative, that marriage of winter awe and the heart of a 19th century Russian poet. But it takes a meteorologist to explain how it can be so cold on a sunny January day. In a nutshell, the winter sun just doesn't have enough time, during the shortened days, to warm the air. That, and the angle of the sun is lower, thus less effective, this time of year.
That's interesting, Pushkin might retort, but seeing Tuesday's sunshine along the Wasatch Front might still drag you outside, "sliding on the morning snow (where) 'Dear friend, we'll let our worries go."
In the Salt Lake and Tooele valleys, sunshine will glimmer off the white terrain on Tuesday. High temperatures will be in the mid-30s, a forecast to be repeated under slightly cloudier skies on Wednesday. Overnight lows will dip into the teens.
It will feel more like early spring in southern Utah. Tuesday's highs were forecast in the low-50s under clear, sunny skies, warming a few degrees more on Wednesday. Overnight lows in Utah's Dixie will be in the upper-20s.
The break in storm activity does have a downside, however. With the exception of Box Elder, Tooele, Washington and Carbon counties, which were "green," or healthy, the Utah Division of Air Quality rated the remainder of the state — including the populous urban valleys — as "yellow," or moderate for particulate pollution levels through the midweek.
The Utah Avalanche Center rated the risk for potentially deadly backcountry snowslides at "considerable" for all areas of the state except for the Skyline, Moab and Abajo mountains, which were graded at "moderate" for avalanche danger on Tuesday.
For more extensive forecast information, visit The Salt Lake Tribune's weather page at: http//www.sltrib.com/weather.
Twitter: @remims