Good evening. This is Casey Olsen with the Utah Climate Center.
What an absolute bonkers first half of October, with a seemingly non stop stream of precip and daily records being broken across the state.
I get a lot of questions about how the storm cycle impacted the larger context, drought conditions, which is admittedly a pretty long discussion, but in short, this storm cycle helps things like top soil moisture and reducing our evaporative demand, but we still really need to see how our snowpack does this winter.
Snowpack accounts for 95% of our general water resources, for context.
On this front, I was delighted to see this morning's latest Climate Prediction Center's winter forecast maps, which polled the area that favored wetter than normal conditions ever so slightly more south towards northern Utah.
The bulk of the state is still in that equal chances/favoring drier than normal conditions down in the southeast, so I'm hoping that the weak statistical signal won't flip towards the dry end.
Hopping over to the short term forecast, after Thursday morning system exit, we'll have a pleasant break in the weather this weekend, just in time to enjoy some spooky Halloween activities.
As the clouds clear, freezing temperatures are a concern in the mornings, especially over the western desert areas.
It's starting to look like our next system will be a quick hitting, cold Pacific trough grazing the northern half of the state, Sunday night into Monday morning.
Temperatures in the northern valleys will steadily rise to a very pleasant mid 60s heading into Saturday. The Southern Utah low elevations will hover around the 70s.
With the Utah Climate Center. I'm Casey Olson.