Utah forecast: a record-setting warm, sprin..

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It's not just a welcome early spring for the Wasatch Front; northern Utah is blossoming with record warm temperatures as well as wildflowers.

The National Weather Service says that Wednesday's forecast 75 degrees for Salt Lake City will blow away the 2015 record of 73 for the date.

Record highs also were expected for Cedar City (75, bettering a 2013 mark of 73 degrees), Logan (71, breaking the 2003 record of 69), Delta (77, beating 2013's 75 degrees), and Alta (61, edging the resort town's 1994 mark of 61 degrees).

Of such halcyon days the novelist Anne Lamott vowed, "I am going to look around at all the flowers, and look up at the hectic trees. I am going to close my eyes and listen."

Wednesday's sunny and warm conditions will slip a bit toward cloudier and cooler weather on Thursday in the Salt Lake and Tooele valleys, when highs in the mid-60s will rule. Friday's forecast calls for partly cloudy skies and highs in the upper-60s, building toward a weekend of temperatures in the upper-60s to upper-70s.

Southern Utahns are basking in the sunshine, especially in the redrocks and high deserts of Utah's Dixie. Highs on Thursday will be around 80, down 3-5 degrees from Wednesday's forecast. Friday's forecast is for the low-80s, with Saturday expected warm a few degrees more.

The Utah Division of Air Quality gives "green," or healthy grades for all of the state's monitoring districts through Thursday.

That's what Gustav Mahler must have had in mind when he declared, "Spring won't let me stay in this house any longer! I must get out and breathe the air deeply again."

Hopefully, the Austrian composer didn't sneeze at the blossoming of cottonwood and cedar trees — both were "high" on the Intermountain Allergy & Asthma website's pollen index as of Wednesday.

The Utah Avalanche Center lowered the risk ratings for backcountry mountain snowslides as "moderate" for all of the state's slopes, with the exception of the Moab and Abajo ranges, which were graded "low."

For more extensive forecast information visit the Tribune's weather page at http://www.sltrib.com/news/weather/.

remims@sltrib.com

Twitter: @remims

Utah forecast: a record-setting warm, spring-like midweek