Park City Mountain Dec. 21, 2025 Photo: TownLift

PARK CITY, Utah — In a Record Event Report issued early Tuesday, the National Weather Service’s Salt Lake City office said Salt Lake City set both a record high maximum temperature (67 degrees) and a record high minimum temperature (59 degrees) on Monday, Dec. 22, breaking the previous marks of 57 degrees (1964) and 49 degrees (1955).

The same report said Cedar City also set daily records Monday, with a record high of 64 degrees (breaking 63 in 2005) and a record high minimum of 44 degrees (breaking 39 in 2019).

Those daily records land as Salt Lake City tracks toward a historic month. The Salt Lake Tribune reported Salt Lake City is on pace for its warmest December since at least the late 1800s, when records began, citing National Weather Service meteorologist Monica Traphagan. Traphagan said the month’s average temperature is about 2 degrees warmer than the previous record December, set in 1917 at roughly 42 degrees.

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KSL Weather meteorologist Matt Johnson also noted this benchmark in a recent post, “Warmest Decembers in SLC,” explaining that monthly rankings are based on averaging daily highs and lows over all 31 days, with December 2025 now ahead of December 1917.

The balmy pattern isn’t limited to the valley. In Park City, the seven-day forecast calls for highs in the upper 40s to low 50s through Christmas. A cooler turn is expected later in the week.

For many Utahns, the most visible absence is snow. The Tribune reported that Salt Lake City has not yet recorded measurable snowfall this season and could challenge the city’s record for latest first measurable snow — Jan. 2 — if late-week chances don’t pan out.

What the region is getting instead is a steady run of spring-like temperatures paired with periodic winds. The National Weather Service forecast for Salt Lake City includes multiple days forecast to be windy or breezy this week, with temperatures near record levels ahead of Christmas.

The warmth has started to show up in odd places — including on branches.

The Tribune reported that the pear trees outside the Triad Centre in downtown Salt Lake City have begun to blossom, a midwinter signal that typically belongs to a different month entirely. Utah State University plant, soil and climate instructor Rachel Broadbent told the Tribune she has seen small bulbs bloom early before, but said winter tree blossoms at the solstice were a first for her.

Broadbent said early blooming usually isn’t dangerous for the plant itself, but can affect fruit production if too many buds open now, leaving fewer for spring pollination. She added that plants don’t always “spend” all their buds at once — a biological hedge if colder weather returns.

As December winds down, the larger question is whether this warmth is a holiday-season anomaly or a sign of a longer trend.

For now, meteorologists are tracking what’s in front of them: a late-December forecast that could rewrite the seasonal narrative, record warmth placing this winter in the history books, and a Wasatch Front where Christmas may symbolise a shift—rain jackets in place of snow boots signalling a season unlike any Utah has seen before.