Utah News

In the basement of the Franklin County Courthouse, where we would be safe from any form of severe weather, people from northern Utah and southeast Idaho are training to become weather spotters. Weather-wise it's a calm night in Preston and a little stuffy in the basement meeting room where John Keyes, from the National Weather Service office in Pocatello, is explaining what kinds of weather conditions should be reported by the volunteer spotters:

Thursday afternoon Washington Square was being transformed. Dozens of workers spent the day putting up tents and setting up food carts for what Michael Westley, Spokesman for the Utah Pride Center, says will be the largest Pride celebration ever.

“This will be absolutely a record breaker. We estimated about 28,000 attended last year, we had about 25,000 paid ticket sales and we are expecting that number to go well above 30,000.”

The Environmental Protection Agency has awarded local governments along the Wasatch Front more than a million dollars to help clean up and revitalize blighted property. Here's how Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County and Ogden plan to use the EPA Brownfields grants given to 245 communities nationwide.

With major development underway along North Temple in Salt Lake City, including construction of the Airport TRAX line, Mayor Ralph Becker says this money is a huge leg up for the process.

Utah Senator Orrin Hatch teamed up with a Wyoming lawmaker this week to highlight his efforts to get the gray wolf removed from the Endangered Species List. Some local groups strongly support this plan, while some think it's the wrong path for Utah.

Small business leaders in Utah had the opportunity yesterday to let two Western federal lawmakers know what economic issues impact them the most. Senator Mike Crapo of Idaho joined Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah at Zions Bank Tower in downtown Salt Lake City to hear from local business leaders about what’s impeding job growth and profits. Crapo says the number one obstacle is the U.S. tax code:

“Our tax code is probably the most unfair, complex, expensive to comply with and anti-competitive code we could have come up with and our businesses are facing that.”

A single-engine plane crash over the Memorial Day weekend claimed the live of 4 young men in their 20s. There were no eyewitnesses to the crash, nor were there any airport personnel on duty.

The crash occurred around 1:30 a.m. Saturday morning, but was not discovered until St. George Municipal Airport workers arrived at 6:00 a.m. The Cessna 172 went down 300 feet south of the airport runway. It is not known whether the plan crashed upon take-off or landing.

Keep your eclipse glasses handy, Utah, because there's more solar blockage coming our way this summer. The transit of Venus across the sun on June 5 will be visible from all points in Utah.

Patrick Wiggins, NASA's Ambassador to Utah, explains that this relatively rare event has been "seen by humans only 7 times since the invention of the telescope in the early 1600s."

Last year it was flooding; this year, it’s fires the state is bracing for.

“We’ve had about 120 fires now and it’s growing by the day," says Jason Curry, firefighter and spokesman for the Utah Division of Forestry, Fire and State Lands. He says at this time last year he’d worked on two fires; this year that number is at 20 and counting.

This week a 4th District judge ruled that while the waters are public, he wants more information on the matter before he can determine whether a law limiting access to them is unconstitutional.

Since 2010, the Utah Stream Access Coalition has been working to reverse House Bill 141.