Just Another Day in Utah
On Wednesday the National Weather Service gave Southern Utah an excessive heat warning. The warning starts Thursday afternoon and is effective until 9 p.m., with rain showers expected later this weekend.
The heat warning’s area stretches across most of California and southern Nevada but only hits Utah in the St. George and Lake Powell areas. St. George is expected to reach up to 110 degrees Thursday, with Lake Powell reaching around 106 degrees.
Heat advisories earlier this week covered most of Southern and Central Utah. ABC4 wrote on Monday that it was “safe to say that if you’re not in the upper elevations of Utah, you [were] officially in some sort of heat warning.”
But as of Thursday, temperatures were already beginning to drop in Garfield and Piute counties. Temperatures in Wayne County remained high, but are expected to lower later in the week as well.
Even in St. George and California excessive heat will not stay long. In fact forecasts show a chance of lower temperatures and increased rain this weekend in the aftermath of Hurricane Kay, a category one hurricane off the coast of Baja California, Mexico. The actual path of the hurricane will become clearer after the events of Thursday and Friday.
Assuming the hurricane behaves as expected, rain may reach the Utah-Arizona border on Saturday morning and move northward. Hopefully this rain will bring Utah the moisture it needs without the flooding that is expected to follow in California.
– The Byway
Feature image caption: Heat warnings (purple) spread over the Washington County and Lake Powell areas. Courtesy National Weather Service.