This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated.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.
There are many ways to describe Utah's ongoing heat wave. Knowing it's hot enough to scald a lizard, for example, or that asphalt, indeed, can have a liquid state.
Or, you can just look at the National Weather Service forecast for the next couple days: 100s along the Wasatch Front, and 5-10 degrees hotter than that in southern Utah's redrocks and high deserts.
The Salt Lake and Tooele valleys sizzled toward triple-digits on Tuesday, and 100-degree readings also were expected on Wednesday and Thursday. While breezes of 10-20 mph will offer a whisper of relief from the worst of the heat, overnight lows still won't dip below the mid-70s.
Southern Utahns, who see their thermometers bubble up past 110 degrees later this week, will endure highs of 102-104 over the next couple days. A slight chance of thunderstorms and isolated afternoon and evening rain showers might take some of the searing edge off, though.
The hot-weather misery index will get a boost from degraded air quality in the state's most-populated areas, the urban valleys of Salt Lake, Weber, Utah and Davis counties. The Utah Division of Air Quality graded those areas as "yellow," or moderate for particulate pollution through the midweek period; the rest of the state was "green," or healthy.
At least, allergy sufferers get a break. The Intermountain Allergy & Asthma website reported that mold was "high" and chenopods "moderate," but other culprits of the sneezing, hacking and eye-watering kind were negligible on its pollen index as of Tuesday.
For more extensive forecast information, visit The Salt Lake Tribune's weather page at: http//www.sltrib.com/weather/.
Twitter: @remims