As if Utah’s historically warm winter and spring weren’t enough, summer temperatures sent the state’s thermometers through the roof. From Provo and Lehi to Duchesne and Monticello, communities across Utah experienced their warmest summers on record.
Laketown, near Bear Lake, broke its summer heat record that had stood since 1919. Bryce Canyon and Capitol Reef national parks also smashed their seasonal records, along with Dinosaur National Monument.
Salt Lake City’s summer average wasn’t record-breaking — it landed in the top 10 — but the city registered its hottest day ever, at 109 degrees in mid-July.
This extreme summer is a likely sign of things to come. Climate change, which scientists agree is driven by fossil fuel emissions, is creating a new normal. With the impending super El Niño, experts expect that 2027 could be even hotter.
The health toll of Utah’s increasingly hot summers may be even more devastating than previously thought.
Extreme heat already kills more Americans each year than all other extreme weather events combined. A new investigation from NPR and Boston University indicates that heat-related deaths nationwide are likely five times higher than the totals published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for 2018-2025. The authors say that’s because many deaths that are influenced by extreme heat are not tagged as heat-related in official records.
In Utah, the NPR investigation suggests the real number of people dying from heat is more than twice what federal data shows. And in Salt Lake County, these deaths could be 65% higher than CDC records.
Utah cities are beginning to grapple with the dangerous reality.
“It's just hotter every summer, but what are we going to do about it?” said Moab Sustainability and Grants Coordinator Val Veilleux. “Because I don't think it's going to start getting cooler anytime soon.”
Now, Moab is conducting a mapping project to pinpoint urban heat and create better plans to protect residents and visitors.
The study tracked temperatures throughout Moab in July 2025. Some of the data was gathered by citizen scientists driving around town with sensors. Other data came from monitors at local trailheads. Unsurprisingly, Veilleux said, the results show that it tends to be hottest in downtown and near hiking trails.
“Our red rock out here just acts like a natural oven,” he said. “If you go on a hike, even in the late evening, and you put your hand up to that red rock, it's obvious. It feels like an oven that's been cooking all day.”
Weather stations at Arches and Canyonlands recorded their hottest summer temperatures on record in 2026, between 4 and 5 degrees warmer than their historical averages.
Depending on where someone lives or works within a community, their microclimate may be even toastier than what shows up in the record books.
“What you see on your weather app is not necessarily what you're experiencing on the ground from minute to minute, block to block, neighborhood to neighborhood,” said University of Utah professor Alexandra Ponette-González.
She’s part of a collaborative research team that’s studying how Utahns experience extreme heat on a personal level.
The team clipped sensors to people’s backpacks as they walked around Salt Lake City for a few weeks in the summers of 2025 and 2026. They followed different routes, including downtown, North Temple and Liberty Park.
Overall, the downtown area was the hottest, she said.
The study also found the gap between the hottest and coolest parts of Salt Lake was most pronounced in the morning. As things heat up in the afternoon, everyone tends to be in the same blistering boat. The same is true during heat waves, Ponette-González said, when the warmth builds up everywhere.
“So, there are times and places where some folks are going to be more vulnerable than others, depending on where they're at or depending on the neighborhood they live in,” she said, “and then there's also times when everybody is at risk.”
The next step for this research is to pair the localized heat measurements with health impacts. Heat deaths are thought to disproportionately affect homeless populations, Ponette-González said. Another new study she’s involved with examined how extreme heat affects unsheltered people in Salt Lake City and how something as simple as a shady tree could mean the difference between life and death.
“What we found was that standing under the shade of a tree for as little as 10 to 15 minutes could reduce your heat index by as much as 5 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit,” she said. “That's a lot.”
Once a city knows its risks, the next challenge is communicating that information to residents. But there can be a gap, especially in places that haven’t historically had to prioritize extreme heat precautions.
Ponette-González’s team looked at how several Western cities offer residents guidance about heat’s health impacts and ways to protect themselves. Their findings indicate that Salt Lake City and neighboring Boise are behind the curve.
“Cities are trying to, in my assessment, catch up on, ‘Hey, how do we deal with this threat?” Ponette-González said.
In Moab, the heat mapping study was supposed to get more federal funding to do community outreach about its findings, but Veilleux said the grant was terminated last year. President Donald Trump has repeatedly targeted scientific research funding nationwide during his second term.
Without that money, Moab is piecing together an outreach program on its own. It’s a tall task to reach both Moab’s roughly 5,200 residents and its 3 million yearly visitors.
So, Moab has been meeting with other local partners to brainstorm communication strategies, from the Bureau of Land Management and county emergency services to nonprofits that work with elderly and homeless populations. Despite the challenges, he said there has been overwhelming community interest.
“We were kind of afraid at first that we'd be telling people like, ‘Yeah, it's hot,’ and people wouldn't really care,” Veilleux said. “But people definitely care about it, for sure. And they see it.”
Some ideas include launching a cooling center program, adding more hydration stations around town and promoting community events that take place in air conditioning. The plan is to have the city’s heat outreach strategy in place by summer 2027.
