SALT LAKE CITY — Normal is changing and the change is accelerating. That's what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed definitively with their once-a-decade update to the national climate "normals" of temperature and precipitation.
For the Wasatch Front and Southern Utah, we chose mountain and city locations to see how precipitation normals changed in the mountains, and how temperatures changed in the valleys.
For the Wasatch Front, Alta at the top of Little Cottonwood Canyon now shows markedly lower precipitation totals, especially at in the late fall months from Halloween to New Years. That a bad sign for the snow pack watering Utah's largest metro area.
Salt Lake City International Airport saw consistently increased temperatures year-round. The increases are most evident in the average low temperatures.
For Southern Utah, Brian Head is high above Parowan and Cedar City, indicative of the snowpack feeding much of Utah's more populated southwest corner. Brian Head saw significantly lower precipitation normals in late Fall and through the Winter.
St. George saw similar increases in their monthly average temperatures, most evident in the low temperatures most often experience in the early morning hours.
