Utah Weather: Increasing wind and fire dangers this weekend with a colder and wetter pattern arriving Sunday

SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — Happy Friday, Utah! Our Friday afternoon will feature pleasant conditions across the area.

Today’s weather: Sunshine and pleasant temps

Daytime highs will warm into the upper 70s for our Friday afternoon. Southwest Utah will see daytime highs in the low to mid 90s Friday afternoon.

Tommorow’s weather: Stout cold front

An approaching cold front will bring some extra clouds and gusty southwest winds to the state for our Saturday. A Fire Weather Warning has been issued for Grand County along with most southern Utah south of I-70 Saturday.

West and southwesterly winds will be sustained between 15-25 MPH on Saturday with wind gusts between 35-50 MPH. The gusty winds and relative low humidity levels will lead to an elevated fire danger across southern parts of the state.

A few isolated showers will develop Saturday across portions of central and eastern Utah, with partly cloudy skies developing across northern Utah. Daytime highs on Saturday will warm into the lower 70s across the Wasatch Front. Highs will warm near 90° across southwest Utah.

Looking ahead: Frost and freeze concerns

The cold front moves through Saturday evening, bringing a deeper surge of cooler conditions to Utah late this weekend. Daytime highs will only be in the 50s on Sunday and Monday. The core of the storm arrives Sunday bringing widespread rain showers across northern Utah.

As colder air rotates into the state Sunday evening, rain showers will likely change over to snow showers for our mountain locations across the state through Monday morning. Snow levels look to drop as low as around 6,000 FT, including some mountain valleys.

Some light to moderate snow accumulations looks possible for the mountain valleys and mountain areas, with a better shot of seeing 6″+ for places like the Upper Cottonwoods and the Western Uintas. The good news is that road temperatures will be quite warm, so no major travel impacts are expected for most areas. Still, could see the accumulations on elevated surfaces by early Monday morning.  

We will likely have to deal with a few mornings of frost and freeze concerns for some of our valleys into early next week. Currently, looks like the period to watch will be Monday morning and again on Tuesday morning.

High pressure builds behind this system by the middle of next week bringing the return of sunshine and moderating temperatures to Utah.