This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

Bitter, penetrating cold will grip northern Utah in an icicled fist into early Saturday morning, but the rest of the weekend will be downright balmy.

Relatively, that is, like if you were a penguin huddled on a windblown, Antarctic icescape: After overnight lows near or below zero, Wasatch Front thermometers will crawl into the upper-20s Saturday afternoon, a heat wave compared to Friday's low- to mid-teens.

Then on Sunday, after overnight valley rain and mountain snow and lows in the mid- to upper-20s, highs will flirt with 40 degrees in the Salt Lake and Tooele valleys.

That hope was all that was warm on Friday, however. Cedar City Regional Airport broke a 46-year-old record by reaching a low of -14 degrees on Friday.

The airport also tied a record for maximum temperature from 1973, when it reached 17 degrees.

In the West Desert, the Utah Test and Training Range dipped to a record low of -13.

Alpine broke two records when it reached a low of -2 and because it never warmed above 17 degrees. On every recorded Jan. 6 previously, Alpine had always reached at least 23 degrees.

It was so dangerously cold in Logan and Cache County School District closed classes for a second straight day. School buses in neighboring Weber County ran late due to the cold, and in Davis County, school officials cancelled all Friday evening activities on their campuses.

Salt Lake City dipped to 6 degrees at 12:30 a.m. — just short of a minus-7 record low for the date set in 1973 — a chilly foreshadowing of its daytime high of 15. Saturday's predawn temperatures for the state capital will tumble to 6 degrees, with the day's high right at freezing.

Blow-torch wielding Utah Transit Authority crews were out early to address frozen switches at some locations along TRAX light rail lines, spokesman Remi Barron said. Delays of 20-30 minutes were reported for some of UTA's FrontRunner commuter trains experiencing frozen doors.

Ogden shivered at 2 degrees below zero early Friday morning — but it felt like minus-16, again due to a frigid breeze — ahead of a 13-degree afternoon high. Provo began the day at minus-5, forecast to warm to just 17 degrees by afternoon; Cedar City slid to minus-8, with a high of 24; and Brigham City, with a predawn minus-19, settled for a 14-degree afternoon forecast.

Even southwestern Utah's St. George, usually immune from the worst of the state's wintry weather, began Friday at 21 degrees ahead of a 41-degree high.

OK, but all those cold temperatures are a day at a Carribean beach if you had the insane audacity of spending the night at Peter Sinks, which came in at minus-53 degrees early Friday morning. The natural sink hole, located at 8,100 feet elevation in the Bear River Mountains in Cache County, has the state record low of minus-69.3, set on Feb. 1, 1985.

Drivers finally appeared to take note of the continued icy road conditions during Friday's commute. After being deluged with 230 crashes and slideoffs during the snowstorms of Wednesday and Thursday, the Utah Highway Patrol had responded to about two-dozen accidents, none involving serious injuries, as of 9 a.m. Friday.

Still, the Utah Avalanche Center warned that conditions remained dangerous for outdoor winter sports enthusiasts. In addition to the extreme cold, the risk for potentially deadly backcountry mountain snowslides was "high" in the Logan, Salt Lake and Provo districts, "considerable" for the Uintas, Skyline and Moab areas, and "moderate" for the Ogden and Abajo mountains.

The Utah Division of Air Quality rated particulate pollution levels as "yellow," or moderate for Salt Lake, Davis and Utah counties; the remainder of the state was graded "green," or healthy extending into the weekend.

For more extensive forecast information, visit the Tribune's weather page (http://www.sltrib.com/weather/).

remims@sltrib.com

Twitter: @remims