Current inversion in Salt Lake City will get worse before it gets better
Jan 15, 2025, 5:00 PM | Updated: Jan 16, 2025, 12:22 pm

FILE: The University of Utah campus and the Wasatch Mountain range is pictured from the Bonneville Shoreline Trail during an inversion in Salt Lake City on Thursday, Dec. 5, 2024. (Laura Seitz, Deseret News)
(Laura Seitz, Deseret News)
SALT LAKE CITY — The winter inversion in Utah’s capital city will get worse before it gets better.
Forecast data from the Utah Department of Environmental Quality shows the air will remain moderately unhealthy at least through Friday.
National Weather Service Meteorologist Julie Cunningham said this inversion is typical.
“It’s just a common winter-time inversion,” she said. “We see them most often in December and January when that sun angle is still really low.”
Although the smog is thick, it is not currently coming from the west.
“It doesn’t appear to be any wildfire smoke from California,” Cunningham explained. “We’ve been mainly seeing northerly and north-easterly flow, which doesn’t really bode well for any transport from the southwest.”
A cold front moving in late Friday night bringing some potential snow on Saturday will help clear the air for next week.