July2024 Climatological Summary
This year, July had 5 days with high temperatures over 100 F (37.8 C), which is 14% of all 100+ July days in the last twenty-seven years. An even distribution of 100-degree days would show 1.5 days per year. It seems like temperatures are getting warmer. The mean temperature for July 2024 was 79.5 F (26.4 C) versus the 27-year average of 77.1 F (25.0 C). The maximum temperature was 103.2 F (39.6 C) on July 11. One hundred-degree days are much less common in both August and September, but August has already recorded its first (August 2).
July was dry but not nearly as dry as June. The total for July was 0.16" (0.4 cm), and the total for the two summer months was 0.17" ( 0.4 cm). The lack of rainfall may correlate with greater water use; however, water conservancy is growing in Utah.
June 2024 Climatological Summary
The earth was parched during June 2024, and there was only 0.01" (0.03 cm) of rain that fell. That rain fell on June 1st. So, is this unusual? No, it is not. In the years 2012 and 2013 both had no rain at all! The day that Tropical Storm Alberto's remnants came by wasn't quite a trace. How do you measure a trace? If you have a sidewalk nearby, see if you can find a few squares that are covered with raindrops. If so, and the rain gauge registers less than 0.01", then you have a trace of rain to report. The 27-year average for precipitation is 0.98" (2.5 cm).
The hottest day of the month was June 12th, when the temperature was 98.4 F (36.9 C). Almost half of the days in June, fourteen to be exact had temperatures that exceeded 90 F (32.2 C).The coldest temperature this year was 38.3 F (3.5 C) on June 18. The coldest June temperature in 27 years was 33 F (0.5 C) in June 2002.
The twenty-seven-year mean June temperature is 68.2 F (20.1 C). June 2024 had a mean temperature of 75.2 (24 C). Does anyone want to debate with me the veracity of global warming?
May 2024 Climatological Summary
Shiver me timbers, May 2024 was COLD! The month significantly delayed the start of summer. The twenty-seven-year average is 59.6 F (15.3 C), but this May was just 56.4 F (13.6 C), three full degrees below average (Fahrenheit). Please don't act like Donald Trump and say, "See, it's cooler than normal. Climate Change is fake." Wrong! Temperatures for a given day or month are sometimes colder or warmer than average. What you have to look at is the trend, and the trend is unmistakably hotter.
The total precipitation was 1.87" (4.7 cm), which is very close to the twenty-seven-year average of 1.83" (4.6 cm). The rainy period was May 3-7, though almost a third of an inch fell on May 25.
June's first week (and occasionally the second week) is typically rainy. Snow fell in the Salt Lake Valley during the first week of June 1968. It was incredible then and would be MORE incredible now.
April 2024 Climatological Summary
The month was rather dry. If it weren't for the rain that fell April 25-28, it would have been bone dry. Just over an inch (1.08") (2.7 cm) fell. April is often the wettest month of the year. April 2020 was the driest April in the last 27 years, with 0.33" (0.8 cm).
The average temperature for April 2024 was 51.5 F (10.8 C). This compares to the twenty-seven-year mean of 48.7 F (9.3 C), exceeding the twenty-seven-year mean by 2.8 F (1.5 C).
As normal, the prevailing wind direction was from the south-southwest.
March 2024 Climatological Summary
The Spring Months (March, April and May) make up the wettest season in northern Utah. March was very wet, with some snow and lots of rain. March 2024 was much like April used to be. Fifty years ago snow in April melted quickly. Now snow in March melts quickly. Back in High School, I remember that snow storms of over 12" (30.48 cm) were not rare in March. I started to "feel" climate change as early as the 1990s, in the sense that the data was changing.
The total precipitation in March 2024 was well above normal at 3.39" (8.6 cm). The 27-year average is 2.04" (5.2 cm).
The average temperature was 41.0 F (5.0 C) versus a 27-year average of 45.4 F (7.4 C). The frequent storminess kept the temperatures lower than what would have happened with the average storminess.
February 2024 Climatological Summary
In the old days in the Salt Lake Valley, all of the precipitation in February would be delivered as snow. This year thanks to Global Warming most of the precipitation in the valley was delivered as rain. There was a lot of rain and some snow totaling 2.94" (7.5 cm), far above the 27-year average of 1.63" (4.1 cm) yet far below the all-time record of 5.12" (13.0 cm) recorded in 1998. Indeed February 1998 is the wettest of all time at my location.
The number of days where the temperature fell below 32 F ( 0 C) was 23 which is also the 27-year average for the month. The high temperature for the month was 61.1 F (16.2 C) on the 25th. The lowest temperature was 17.5 F (-8.1 C) which occurred strangely on the 28th.
So far the winter season has produced a goodly amount of mountain snow, yet the wettest period for precipitation are the spring months of March, April, and May which produce an average of 6.31" (16.0 cm) of the full-year average of 18.99" (48.2 cm) or one-third of the precipitation for the year.
January 2024 Climatological Summary
While we had some snow in the Salt Lake Valley during January 2024, the total precipitation was just 1.57" (4.0 cm), about an inch below the 27-year average of 2.64" (6.7 cm). A large storm was expected the weekend of January 13-14. This storm hit the mountains but left very little in the Salt Lake Valley.
The twenty-seven-year mean temperature for January is 30.6 F (-0.7 C). The mean for January 2024 was 33.4 F (0.7 C) or 2.8 F (1.4 C) higher than the mean. Global Warming is showing up in data across the world regularly. That said, even without data my attention to the weather confirmed it to me in the 1990s.
Our mountains are on track for a normal amount of snowfall. So long as February, March, and April check in with near-normal precipitation, we should have a normal runoff to fill reservoirs.
My home is in a quiet location concerning the wind. We seldom have wind speeds over 35 mph.
Weather data and basic software provided by Davis Instrument . Sandy Weather uses the Davis Weather Vue instrument cluster. See Davis Instruments for more details.
The best on-air weatherman in the Salt Lake City area was: Grant Weyman (KSL-5), he retired and at this time I don't have a new favorite. I genuinly don't like those who don't have a degree in Atmospheric Science.
The meteorologist in charge at SandyWeather.com is Reed B. Haslam, M.S. Atmospheric Science (1980), M.S. Computer Science (1981), University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah. He is solely responsible for the content of this web site.