This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated.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.
"Life is only a flicker of melted ice," the Serbian poet Dejan Stojanovic mused, an observation on mortality in winter likely shared by Utah Highway Patrol troopers keeping watch along the Wasatch Front.
Fresh flurries of snow ushered in northern Utah's Wednesday, adding a layer of white — from 1-3 inches in the valleys to half-a-foot in the mountains — to already snow- and ice-packed interstates, highways and urban arterials.
"We're not overwhelmed, but we are staying fairly busy out there," UHP Sgt. Todd Royce said. "We've got another round of storms coming in, too. People need to be aware that with this cold weather, more moisture on those cold roads makes for black ice and very treacherous driving conditions."
Between 6 a.m. and 8:30 a.m., troopers had rolled on nearly 20 crashes on slippery stretches of interstates 15, 201 and 80 in Salt Lake and Utah counties. Salt Lake Valley emergency dispatchers logged more than a dozen accidents during the same period on area arterials.
Big and Little Cottonwood canyons were open Wednesday morning, but only to four-wheel-drive or tire-chained vehicles. Semi-trailer rigs on I-80 through Parleys Canyon also were ordered to chain up.
A Winter Weather Advisory was in place for commuters throughout the northwestern quarter of the state, from the Utah-Nevada border to the mountainous spine running from Logan south through Brigham City, Ogden, Salt Lake City, Park City, Provo and Nephi.
That National Weather Service advisory expired at noon Wednesday, but the cycle of light snow and continued subfreezing temperatures — dipping into the single digits at night and climbing only into the upper-teens and 20s during daylight — will continue through the remainder of the week.
The Salt Lake and Tooele valleys looked for Thursday highs in the mid-20s after pre-dawn temperatures of 15-20 degrees, Friday was to be even colder, welcoming the sunrise with a bone-chilling 5-10 degrees and afternoon highs struggling to top 20.
However, southern Utah will escape the frosty swipe of Old Man Winter, with high temperatures in the low- to mid-40s over the next couple days. Overnight lows in Utah's Dixie will slide into the mid- to upper-20s, but no snowfall was forecast through Friday.
The danger of possibly deadly backcountry mountain snowslides remained elevated. Indeed, the Utah Avalanche Center began Wednesday putting the risk at "high" for the mountains above Logan, Ogden, Provo and Moab. The Salt Lake, Uintas, Skyline and Abajo districts were at "considerable" avalanche risk.
The Utah Division of Air Quality awarded "green," or healthy grades statewide through Thursday.
For more extensive forecast information visit the Tribune's weather page at http://www.sltrib.com/news/weather/.
Twitter: @remims