Salt Lake City is experiencing "unseasonably warm" weather this month, according to The Salt Lake Tribune, with unusually high temperatures expected to persist.
What's happening?
Utah residents hoping for a snowy Christmas are likely to be disappointed, according to the newspaper.
Last Tuesday, KUER reported that the state had just experienced its warmest November on record, with temperatures 1 degree higher on average than the standing record set in 2017.
Western Regional Climate Center climatologist Dan McEvoy told the outlet that seasonal high temperatures are not "shocking" on their own but said the "spatial extent of the warmth" in November was unusual in that it was not confined to any specific part of Utah.
On Thursday, Salt Lake City broke a heat record for Dec. 11, and the National Weather Service didn't anticipate an imminent change.
NWS meteorologist Julie Cunningham told the outlet that she and her colleagues had even worn Hawaiian shirts to work because of the late-summer-like temperatures.
AccuWeather's forecast for Salt Lake City predicted daytime temperatures in the 50s through Dec. 24, and Cunningham had similar expectations.
"I think those warm temperatures might stick around. We're strongly favored toward above-normal temperatures in both the six-to-10-day outlook and the eight-to-14-day outlook," Cunningham explained, per the Tribune.
Why is Utah's warm weather concerning?
When considering "extreme weather," people tend to think of historic hurricanes, floods, and wildfires.
Rarely does unusually mild weather register as "extreme," and while the impacts may be less alarming when the weather is unseasonably pleasant, the underlying concerns are the same.
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Always 😷 Last Tuesday, a user on Reddit's r/Weather asked what caused sustained high temperatures, unsettled by how "drastic" and "fast" changes to Utah's weather appeared to be.
Unseasonable weather, like Utah's sustained winter heat, has always occurred, but extreme weather is different. Human activity is a key driver of extreme weather, which wreaked havoc worldwide throughout 2025.
As temperatures rise and seas warm, the resulting effect is like steroids for weather systems.
Hurricanes, floods, and even out-of-season weather are strengthened. As a result, anomalous weather is more frequent, more severe, more costly, and deadlier.
In Utah, this sustained increase in December temperatures showed that even when extreme weather isn't violent, it's still volatile and destabilizing.
"There's still time to turn things around, but it puts Utah's future water supply — 95% of which comes from snowpack — in a precarious spot," KUER said of the holiday heat wave.
What's being done about it?
McEvoy told KUER that some regions of Utah would need "above-average snowfall" to follow an unseasonably warm November and December to resolve snowpack "deficits."
Ultimately, awareness of critical climate issues, such as extreme weather, is crucial as these events become more commonplace.
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