An absolutely scorching start to September. Last week, I talked about the upcoming heat wave and said there was an outside chance that each of the first 7 days of September could reach triple digits at SLC. Well, not only did that happen, but essentially it just kept getting hotter. Prior to this past week, September had only ever had 3 days of 100+ temps, and they were all 100F exactly, never above that number. Well, we broke that record by reaching 102F on Thursday, September 1st. Then, we broke that record on Saturday with 103F. Then, we broke Saturday's record on Monday with 104F. Then, we broke Monday's record on Tuesday with 105F. Only to then beat Tuesday's record with an all-time record-tying max of 107F on Wednesday, September 7th. Last week, I posted the list of hottest September days which looked like this:

Now, that same list looks like this:

We have absolutely mutilated the record book! 

Now, this heat wave would have been remarkable even if it had occurred in July. But what makes this stretch so sensationally astounding is that it happened during the first week of September. I've been trying to contextualize just how amazing this is. The best way I found to put it is as follows...

Prior to this past week, there had been 52 days at SLC airport in which we had reached 104F or higher. So while not super common, it does happen quite a bit. However, all of those dates had been in a range between late June and early August -- the hottest part of summer. There had NEVER been a reading of 104F or higher after August 5th in SLC. We rapidly lose heat potential after July so August rarely sees hot days. However, now, we have 3 days after September 5th of 104F or higher. It's so anomalous, that our distribution of temps if you break summer down in 10-day segments now looks like this:

There are ZERO days of 104F or higher from August 6 through September 4, then three days after September 4. That's a stretch of 30 days. When it comes to changing seasons, 30 days is a LONG time gap between days reaching a temp threshold. 

And if you want to looks at just how hot the first week of September was this year relative to previous years, we can look at the average temperature over the first 7 days. This is a list of the top 10 hottest first 7 days of September ever:

Think back to all those years we had hot labor days, including that extra hot Labor Day in 2019. (I remember it well because I was at Soldier Hollow for the sheep dog competition and we were roasting!) Well, this year, our average temperature came in 5.5F degrees hotter than the next highest ever. To break a weekly record by a margin that large is astounding! 

I really don't have any other ways to put it other than "Wow!". I have never seen a more anomalous and scary week temperature-wise in Utah than this past week. I honestly would not have thought it possible for us to see these values this time of year. Between this heat wave, and the heat wave that rocked the PNW in June of 2021, I think I need to reassess what I think is possible. 

The good news is that while still quite hot, it will be much cooler today, Thursday. We will continue to cool down into the weekend with temps closer to average. Next week, moisture from Hurricane Kay could combine with a low pressure system and bring chances for showers to Utah. GEFS mean precip shows decent chances for healthy totals across the state. 

Probably not a deluge, but welcome showers are possible. Cooler air will be around so I wouldn't be shocked if we saw some snowflakes in the highest elevations of the Uintas. Honestly, snow is highly probably over the next few weeks, so I'm keeping an eye on the models and will update as soon as accumulating snowfall looks a good bet. 

Evan | OpenSnow