Utah will have below normal, cooler temperatures late this week, but first the Wasatch Front and beyond will endure several days of decidedly hotter weather than average.
The Salt Lake and Tooele valleys looked for highs around 90 through Wednesday, about 10 degrees above the norm for this time of year. Thursday, in the low 80, will be just about par for daytime temperatures, but Friday will see the mercury slip into the upper-60s — 5-7 degrees below normal.
After sunny and dry conditions Monday and Tuesday, Wednesday will be ushered in by morning rain and afternoon thundershowers, a wet shift that continues through the week’s end.
That is a William Wordsworth kind of September, when “Departing summer hath assumed an aspect of tenderly illumed, the gentle look of spring that calls from yonder leafy shade, unfaded. . . .”
Southern Utahns also begin the week with above-normal highs in the mid- to upper-90s (2-5 degrees above the average), but Thursday and Friday will see mid- to upper-80s with a slight chance of rainfall toward the end of the week.
There will be some modest improvement in the air we breathe. The Utah Division of Air Quality rates Salt Lake, Davis, Weber, Tooele, Utah, Duchesne and Uintah counties as “yellow,” or moderate for ozone and particulate pollution into the midweek. The remainder of the state earns “green” grades for healthy air.
Still, there’s a tradeoff, the cosmos once again playing a cruel jest on allergy sufferers. The Intermountain Allergy & Asthma website listed grass, chenopods, ragweed and mold all as “high” on its pollen index; sagebrush was at “moderate” levels.
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