Good evening, this is Casey Olsen with the Utah Climate Center.
After an incredibly wet and cool October, of which I've spoken ad nauseam about at this point, we enter late autumn with the return of warm and dry.
In terms of seasonal projections, Utah mostly remains in between areas of strong statistical signal for above or below average precipitation, which is not great for our confidence in going either way.
I will say that we've seen the above average precipitation signal shift ever so slightly south and now clips the very northern regions of the state, so I'll take what I can get.
Temperatures continue to swing on the warmer end of the distribution as well.
Looking at the short term forecast, the North will see this midweek system begin to peter out heading into the weekend, while a quick reinforcing shot of precip will impact the Idaho border tonight, before quieting down heading into the weekend.
The cold front associated with the system did bring temps down to near normal for this time of year.
Looking at Saturday into Sunday, the large scale pattern will shift to a very high amplitude high pressure ridge. This means clearing out of the weather and warmer temperatures for the first half of next week.
Given our decreasing solar angles, there is air quality concerns as our air gets pretty stagnant.
The second half of next week is much more uncertain, with the models having a hard time landing on a solution. Some have a decent Pacific trough that breaks down this ridge, while others show that the system really splits apart before reaching us.
I'm also not loving the most recent model runs that show a favorability for the splitting apart solution.
Temperatures drop to the 50s for the North but will warm back up to the 60s as the high pressure sets in, while southern Utah low elevations continue to bask in beautiful mid 70s.
With the Utah Climate Center, I'm Casey Olson.