Record high temps put sweat into Labor Day

Cities across Utah saw record high temperatures over Labor Day weekend, according to the Salt Lake office of the National Weather Service.

The Logan and Tooele areas beat records Monday, while the Delta and Salt Lake areas tied. Also, Alpine, Cedar City and Zion National Park tied their record high minimum temperatures, while Capitol Reef, Green River and Hanksville exceeded theirs.

On Sunday, Delta set a new high maximum temperature record, and Provo tied its record, while Alpine, Bountiful, Fillmore, Green River, Nephi and Salt Lake City either beat or tied high minimum temperatures.

The high temperatures are a strong finish to what the NWS has called Utah's hottest summer on record.

On average, the temperature over the months of June, July and August this year has been 79.3 degrees, according to NWS spokesman Gene Van Cor.

The average was computed by taking the average of the high and low temperatures for each day, then computing those numbers into a monthly mean. The three monthly means were then computed to get the 79.3-degree summer average, Van Cor said.

Temperature records have been kept in Utah since 1928, Van Cor said. The second-hottest summer on record was 1994, which averaged 78.6 degrees. The year 2003 fell into third place at 78.2 degrees, according to the NWS.

Among the top eight hottest summers, only one was more than 30 years ago, Van Cor said. That was 1961, which comes in seventh at 77.5 degrees.

"We've seen a warming trend over the last 30 years," Van Cor said, after saying he did not have enough experience to say whether the trend was due to global warming. "This last 30 has been warmer. We have observed it. The '80s were warm, the '90s were warmer, and now we're here."

This week's high temperatures are expected to cool to the 70s and 80s by the weekend across most of the Wasatch Front as a westerly system moves across the state, according to the NWS Web site. By Friday and Saturday, temperatures in the highest-elevation areas of Utah will be near freezing.

Today, a 30 percent chance of precipitation will accompany cloud cover and highs in the 90s. The precipitation chance will increase to 60 percent on Wednesday.

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E-mail: RPalmer@desnews.com