This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated.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.
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but when it comes to Utah's coming spring weekend a simple haiku may outweigh a photo album packed with images of sunshine, flowers and babbling brooks.
Japanese poet Kobayashi Issa put it this way: "What a strange thing! To be alive, beneath cherry blossoms."
Cherry blossoms, and apple, cottonwood, crocus, geranium and desert paintbrush blossoms, too, will punctuate Utah Saturday and Sunday with spring's color and perfume.
High temperatures will flirt with the 70s along the Wasatch Front under alternating sunny to partly cloudy skies. In southern Utah, sunny skies will dominate as daytime temperatures climb into the mid- to upper-80s.
The Utah Division of Air Quality offers its own spring prose, couched in graphics displaying "green," or healthy air quality for all of the state's monitoring stations extending throughout the weekend.
Even the Intermountain Allergy & Asthma website has generally good news for allergy sufferers: All pollen levels are down, with the exception of cottonwood ("moderate" as of Friday.)
However, warmer weather means instability for the backcountry slopes in the state's mountains. The Utah Avalanche Center graded the mountains above Logan, Ogden, Salt Lake City and Provo at "considerable" risk for potentially deadly snowslides; the Uintas were at "moderate" risk, and the Moab district was "low."
Want more extensive forecast information? Visit the Tribune's weather page at http:/www.sltrib.com/weather/.
Twitter: @remims