Good morning, this is Casey Olson with the Utah Climate Center.
Wow. After almost three solid months of little precipitation, I forgot the magic of stepping outside to the smell of rain.
Early analysis of some stations showed this summer ranking in the top driest June through August stretches on record.
Much like the northern half of the state's past winter, we spent much of the season without any action until the very end.
And I think this last monsoonal surge qualifies as ending with a bang, especially for the northern Wasatch. I saw some stations near the Ogden area mount an eclipse over an inch and a half of rain in 24 hours.
While we certainly are not out of the woods in terms of drought, and apart from flooding impacts, this level of moisture is awesome to see.
As we near the end of meteorological summer, looking ahead into the forecast space, we'll see a gradual decline in the cooler, wetter weather, and trend back towards a summer like pattern.
We'll see a grazing, short wave and lingering moisture enough to spark some high terrain thunderstorms, at least until Saturday and Sunday, where the moisture cap gets more definitively shut off.
At that point, warm and dry conditions return in time for the Labor Day holiday lasting at least until mid week.
By the latter half of next week, we're seeing hints of another monsoonal surge that would bring cloud cover and precipitation. Seeing as we're still in summer mode, this storm would definitely more resemble a summer like monsoon setup, rather than an autumn storm with a strongly defined cold front, though we could see it hit highs.
If this plays out, we could see a pleasant start to meteorological autumn temperatures for the northern and eastern valleys will quickly rebound up to the upper 80s. St George and low elevations will also jump back up to the upper 90s.
With the Utah Climate Center, I'm Casey Olson.
