This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated.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.
Autumn, having shuddered off its summer hangover, will bring more typically fall-like conditions to northern Utah this weekend.
After a breezy Friday with high temperatures near 80 degrees, Saturday will dawn under increasingly cloudy skies. By the upper-70s afternoon, thunderstorms and rain showers, carried by winds of 10-20 mph, will settle over the Wasatch Front.
Sunday's highs will dip a few degrees further as the wet, windy and occasionally thunderous weather continues in the Salt Lake and Tooele valleys. Overnight lows will slide into the upper-40s — ushering in a Monday of rain and highs tumbling into the upper-50s.
Still, fall is not a bad thing in the Rockies; you could be in Southern California, where comedian David Letterman once mused, "Fall is my favorite season in Los Angeles, watching the birds change color and fall from the trees."
Southern Utah will skip the precipitation, but that monsoonal front coming in from the south still we see the mercury retreat. Utah's Dixie will see daytime highs in the 80s — and lows in the 50s — throughout the weekend.
By Monday, high temperatures — echoing northern Utah's cooling trend — will be in the upper-60s.
It will be windy, too, in the redrocks and high deserts of the south. Saturday will see steady 10-20 mph winds, and that will build into the 25-30 mph range on Sunday.
While you may want to cinch down that Stetson or tug your beret tighter to your noggin, all that wind and occasional rain is a good thing for the air we breathe. The Utah Division of Air Quality grades the entire state as "green," or healthy when it comes to particulate pollution levels into the weekend.
Still, the Universe is a fickle thing. While the storms and wind stirring the atmosphere mean cleaner air, they also tend to whip up the allergens. The Intermountain Allergy & Asthma website reported that sagebrush was "very high," and ragweed and mold were "high" on its pollen index as of Friday.
For more extensive forecast information, visit The Salt Lake Tribune's weather page at: http//www.sltrib.com/weather/.
Twitter: @remims