This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2016, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Fog covered much of the northern Wasatch Front early Tuesday, a primordial prelude to a fresh cycle of snowstorms expected to roll into Utah through the midweek.
How to describe that thick morning fog? Watching it thin under the winter sun early Tuesday afternoon, Raymond Chandler might scribble how it was "almost without sound, like a thought trying to form itself on the edge of consciousness."
Less poetic but more precise, the National Weather Service simply issued a Dense Fog Advisory through noon Tuesday for a swath of northern Utah encompassing the Cache Valley and Wasatch valleys, including Logan, Smithfield, Brigham City, Ogden, Bountiful, Huntsville, Park City and Heber City. Visibility was down to a quarter-mile or less within the advisory area.
In those affected areas, the fog also added a slippery glaze to overpasses and bridges, bringing cautions to drivers. The Utah Department of Transportation also briefly renewed restrictions on travel in Big and Little Cottonwood canyons to four-wheel drive or tire-chained vehicles early Tuesday.
However, forecasters predicted that once the morning mist cleared, a new cold front would move into the state late Tuesday and Wednesday, bringing another cycle of rain and snow. Thursday and most of Friday will be dry, then another storm system arrives this coming weekend.
The Salt Lake and Tooele valleys looked for snow and highs in the upper-30s on Wednesday, a few degrees cooler than Tuesday's forecast. Overnight lows will be in the upper-teens to low-20s.
Southern Utahns will bask, relative to their northern Utah neighbors, in the mid- to upper-50s on Wednesday, a couple degrees cooler than the wet forecast for Utah's Dixie on Tuesday.
The Utah Division of Air Quality graded air quality statewide in the "green," or healthy zone through the midweek.
The Utah Avalanche Center rated the risk for potentially deadly backcountry snowslides at "considerable" for the Logan, Ogden, Salt Lake, Provo and Uintas districts, while the Skyline, Moab and Abajo mountains earned "moderate" grades for avalanche danger.
For more extensive forecast information, visit The Salt Lake Tribune's weather page at: http//www.sltrib.com/weather.
Twitter: @remims