Salt Lake City shatters 44-year-old October rain record. Is the all-time record next?

SALT LAKE CITY — It's only two weeks into October, but Salt Lake City has already collected more rain this month than any other October on record, as storms continue to pepper the state.

With another 0.68 inches of rain collected from a system that passed through the region late Monday into early Tuesday, Salt Lake City's monthly total rose to 4.16 inches, as of 8 a.m. Tuesday. It surpassed the October record of 3.98 inches set in 1981 along the way.

This month's precipitation — boosted by a near all-time daily record set on Oct. 4 and the remnants of Hurricane Priscilla over the weekend — is now more than anything the city collected from March 19 through Sept. 30, and represents over a third of everything it received throughout the 2025 water year, which ended on Sept. 30.

It resulted in severe flooding in certain parts of the city, prompting an emergency declaration issued last week.

Meanwhile, drought severity has improved across the county. About 37% of Salt Lake County had been listed in severe drought at the end of the water year, but that's no longer the case, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. The county remains in moderate drought, but further improvement could be reported later this week due to additional rain and mountain snow since its last report.

Additional precipitation is forecast late Tuesday into most of Wednesday with another low-pressure system making its way through the state, said KSL meteorologist Matt Johnson. He adds that showers and thunderstorms are possible through the first half of Thursday, which could deliver up to another inch of precipitation across parts of the Wasatch Front and northern Utah.

"It's pretty impressive," he said, noting that parts of southwest and central Utah could also land a quarter to half an inch of precipitation by Thursday morning.

Full seven-day forecasts for areas across Utah can be found online at the KSL Weather Center.

Pushing record territory?

Salt Lake City is now only 0.84 inches of precipitation away from reaching 5 inches in one month for just the fifth time since the National Weather Service began tracking its weather data 151 years ago. It's a feat last achieved in May 2011, which ultimately contributed to the spring snowmelt flooding that led to a statewide emergency being issued a month later.

There may be additional chances for this month to climb the record books, too. Odds slightly favor above-normal or near-normal precipitation across the state through most of the second half of this month, according to the weather service's Climate Prediction Center.

However, the city's all-time monthly precipitation record might be tough to beat, largely because of the remnants of another hurricane. Salt Lake City closed its final week of September 1982 with 4.79 inches of rain as the remnants of Hurricane Olivia battered the West at the time, which pushed its rain total that month to a whopping 7.04 inches of precipitation.

To date, it remains the last time Salt Lake City exceeded 6 inches of precipitation in a single month since 1874.

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