Autumn along the Wasatch Front is a fickle thing, where a warm, windy Wednesday will be supplanted by a week-ending “Big Chill.”
That’s what the National Weather Service is calling northern Utah’s dramatic shift from midweek highs in the mid-70s to temperatures in the upper-50s Thursday and Friday.
The Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore mused that such days are when the “music of the far-away summer flutters around [with] Autumn seeking its former nest.”
Overnight lows in the Salt Lake and Tooele valleys will leave room for no seasonal debate: low-40s before dawn Thursday, and upper-30s on Friday.
The northern mountains already are flirting with winter. Light snow showers are expected at higher elevations and flurries of the white stuff could even dust the region’s benches.
Meanwhile, southern Utahns enter that brief annual period of meteorological compromise typical of the redrocks and high deserts: daytime highs in the upper-70s to low-80s in Utah’s Dixie and overnight lows slipping into the mid-40s.
While autumn weather strengthens its grip statewide, at least you can breathe deeply while you don that jacket for an evening stroll. The Utah Division of Air Quality has given “green,” or healthy grades statewide for the next couple days.