It’s been pretty hot in Utah lately, and the forecast for the week heading into the July Fourth holiday weekend calls for the warm and dry conditions to dig in.
Monica Traphagen, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service’s Salt Lake City office, blames high pressure for keeping temperatures around 10 degrees higher than normal for June.
“I wish I had better news for you,” she says, “but it appears this will be at least for the next week or two.”
Traphagen says storms north of Utah will help keep temperatures in the low 90s at the beginning of the week, but temperatures are headed towards three digits by the weekend. She says it’s a good time to brush up on heat safety.
Meanwhile, she doesn’t see any significant rain in the forecast either.
“It isn’t entirely unusual to get into a dry pattern this time of year,” she says. “The end of June toward the beginning of July is our driest period.”
When it comes to precipitation, the gauges at the Salt Lake City airport are nearly normal for the calendar year, according to the weather service. But, from the standpoint of the water year that begins in October, precipitation is down by more than one-fifth.
The U.S. Drought Monitor reports conditions are somewhere between dry and severe drought in all but the southeastern corner of the state.
