This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Finally. Brrrrrrr.
If you tucked that parka into the back of the closet, dig it out. Shake the cobwebs off the scarf, make it your mission to find the mittens — winter's back in Utah.
Weeks of unseasonably warm, spring-like weather that mocked the depths of Rocky Mountain winter drew a bitter cold recompense worthy of angry Norse gods. It was a cold wind to Valhalla, all right, as a subfreezing Monday morning dawned. Factor in the wind chill from icy gusts, and it felt like minus 10 degrees in Salt Lake City.
Indeed, if northern Utahns weren't so intent on burying their brows inside their faux fur-lined hoods, they might have spied Jethro Tull's "night angels . . . with ice-bound majesty," or even "Valkyrie maidens [crying] above the cold wind" in frigid flight.
The National Weather Service had a High Wind Warning in effect through half of Monday for the northern Wasatch Front, including Weber, Davis, Salt Lake and Tooele counties. The forecast called for steady winds of 25-to-35 mph, with gusts topping 60 mph, into Monday afternoon.
Sunday night, a semi-trailer rig was blown over on Interstate 15 near Corrine, closing down southbound lanes for more than two hours. The rig's driver escaped with minor injuries.
Sunnier weather returns on Tuesday to the state's north, with temperatures — in the 30s Monday — approaching daytime highs in the mid-40s.
What northern Utahns did not see, however, was a repeat of the weekend's valley rain and mountain snow. The precipitation moved south, with a vengeance, as the new work week began.
A Winter Storm Warning was issued for the central and southern Utah mountains was in place until late Monday morning. Up to 2 feet of snow was forecast, with 3 feet falling on southern and eastern facing slopes.
Even St. George, where sunshine and temperatures in the 70s ruled just last week, got 3 inches of snow.
Four inches of snow fell near Lake Powell, 9 in Tropic and 14 inches in Cedar City, where the weekend storm was a record-setter. The Iron County town set a new mark for maximum daily rainfall on Sunday of 0.48 inches, erasing the old one of 0.42, from Jan. 22, 1970.
Highs on Tuesday in St. George will approach 50 degrees, up 10 degrees from Monday's forecast. However, it will remain gusty in southern Utah into Wednesday.
The Utah Division of Air Quality graded the entire state as "green," or healthy for breathing, a prediction that carried into the midweek.
The Utah Avalanche Center rated the risk for potentially deadly backcountry mountain snowslides as "moderate" for the mountains above Logan and Moab, but the rest of the state was graded "low."
For more extensive forecast breakdowns visit the Tribune weather page at http://www.sltrib.com/weather/.
Twitter: @remims