It’s been a hot, hot summer in Utah with questions about a late monsoon. Wonder no more. Suddenly, it’s all about the rain for the last three days.
Lehi had its third wettest two-day period on record, with 2.01 inches. Salt Lake City got 0.77 inches, its 17th highest level of precipitation in a two-day period. Those two cities, along with Provo and Spanish Fork, recorded more rain on Monday and Tuesday than they typically get in the entire month of August.
“You'll occasionally get these heavy rain cells, where you can get a month's worth of rain in a day,” said Alex DeSmet, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Salt Lake City.
🌧️📏3-day rain totals are pretty impressive for most of Utah and SW Wyoming, with the highest totals being over portions of central Utah which picked up between 1-3"+ of rain. Use this link to navigate to your location: https://t.co/i2RneSBsYx #utwx #wywx pic.twitter.com/t91rz5fJff
— NWS Salt Lake City (@NWSSaltLakeCity) August 14, 2024
The cloudbursts aren’t that unusual for monsoon season, which typically runs from the second week of July through September in northern Utah, he said. It starts earlier in the southern part of the state.
Orem saw noteworthy flooding and hail on Tuesday. A Utah Department of Transportation site there “recorded 0.75 inches of rain, which, by itself, isn't impressive, but when you consider it fell in 20 minutes, that is impressive.”
Oh, did we mention that UDOT snow plows have also been used to clear hail on I-15?
Heavy rain sometimes goes unnoticed in uninhabited areas, “whereas the last couple of days, this heavy rain was centered over the Wasatch Front,” which caught more people’s attention, DeSmet said.
It’s hard to predict exactly how much rain will fall, which is why you might see a broad range of potential precipitation. It can be “difficult to communicate [that] you might get a month's worth of rain in an hour or two,” he said. And thunderstorms can be spotty — the Ogden area got very little rain, while cities farther down the Wasatch Front experienced some flooding.
“There's usually a wide range of potential outcomes,” he said, making forecasting difficult.
The rest of this week looks to be dry, but rain could return for the weekend.
“We do see another surge of monsoonal moisture on the horizon, especially on Saturday and Sunday, and some of that could linger around through early next week.”
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
