Welcome to April, Utah.
With a new month ahead of us, it's time for my weather review of March, and what a warm March it was — probably a worst case scenario, hydrologically speaking, following a record dry winter.
It's no secret that temperatures were extremely high, about 10 to 15 degrees above average across the state. Salt Lake hit 84 on March 20, blowing right past their monthly record, which would be a warm temperature for St. George in March.
Speaking of St. George, they hit 97 during this insane heat event. This meant that our snowpack peaked a month early towards the beginning of March, before dropping very fast.
I try not to be too gloom and doom here, but it's really just incredible from a climate perspective. This year has basically changed the statistics for us.
For some context, we are less than half of the next lowest year on record at this point of the year, and about 21% of median.
Thankfully, we've pumped the brakes a little bit on the melting with Thursday's storm.
Looking at the weather forecast, the storm activity slows down beginning this weekend. We'll see clearing out of the cloud cover through Thursday into Friday, which means very cool temperatures thanks to the last cold system.
This brings freezing concerns, and is one of the problems of an early warm start to the spring, as we still experience cold snaps, be extra mindful of your gardens.
We're looking at another stretch of warm temperatures before our next possible system in the latter half of next week.
Temperatures will climb back up to the 50s and 60s as the weekend progresses. We're expecting freezing temperatures overnight at least until Sunday.