This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated.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.
Sunny days, smoggy afternoons and foggy evenings. Now there's both a midweek forecast for northern Utah, and an analogy for the all-too-brief continuum of human life.
Or maybe Mark Twain was right, and weather, like age, "is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter."
Whether you mind or not, Thursday's Wasatch Front forecast calls for a sunny morning, increasing inversion-related pollution as the day stretches past noon, and low-lying fog as the sun sets. Those conditions, including high temperatures in the upper-30s to low-40s, and overnight lows in the low- to mid-20s, were unchanged from Wednesday's forecast.
As for meteorological metaphors, southern Utah's weather through the midweek foreshadows spring, and the soon-to-burst energy the youthful, earthy energy of a new year. Like Wednesday's forecast, Thursday in Utah's Dixie called for highs approaching the mid-60s under sunny skies, with low temperatures just above freezing.
Southern Utah's Washington and Carbon counties also were among the few enjoying "green," or healthy air quality. The Utah Division of Air Quality rated inversion-plagued Salt Lake, Utah, Weber, Box Elder, Cache and Duchesne counties at "orange," or unhealthy through the remainder of the week, while Tooele and Uintah counties were little better, at "yellow," or compromised air quality levels.
The Utah Avalanche Center rated the risk for potentially deadly backcountry snowslides at "moderate" for all of the state's mountain slopes, except for the Moab and Abajo mountains, which were at "considerable" avalanche danger as of Tuesday.
For more extensive forecast information, visit The Salt Lake Tribune's weather page at: http//www.sltrib.com/weather.
Twitter: @remims