🌤️ 49 – 57° Logan | 🌤️ 48 – 60° Ogden | 🌤️ 48 – 62° Salt Lake
🌤️ 50 – 62° Provo | 🌤️ 40 – 58° Manti | 🌤️ 51 – 66° Moab
🌤️ 41 – 56° Cedar City | 🌤️ 54 – 67° St. George

🌅 Good morning! 

A series of flood watches has been issued for most of southern Utah and parts of central and eastern Utah for this weekend.

The background: The National Weather Service's Salt Lake City and Grand Junction, Colorado, offices issued the watches for the Utah regions, which go into effect late Halloween night and last through most of the rest of the weekend.

What to expect: Both offices agree that “moderate to at times heavy precipitation” is expected within the highlighted regions beginning late Saturday and lasting throughout most of Sunday. The watches in southeastern Utah last through Monday morning, Carter Williams reported.

What the alerts say: “Excessive runoff may result in flooding of rivers, creeks, streams, dry washes, slot canyons and other low-lying, and flood-prone locations such as slickrock areas and recent burn scars.”

Read more about the flood watches.

Hundreds gathered this week to celebrate the life of the late Pamela Atkinson, who is considered “Utah’s Mother Teresa.” She dedicated her life to gathering and serving others, especially those experiencing homelessness, living as refugees or who were otherwise vulnerable.

The background: When she was young, Atkinson dreamed of moving from her home in England to become a sheep shearer on a farm in Australia, Emily Walker writes. Of the many things she did during her 93 years of life, sheep shearing was not one of them. She did, however, become a shepherd in one sense of the word.

About the funeral: Fittingly, at Atkinson’s funeral service, multiple speakers quoted Psalm 23, one of Atkinson’s favorite passages, which begins with “The Lord is my shepherd.” One religious leader shared how in the final days of her life, he would sit by her side, reciting the passage.

What leaders are saying: “On one of those final mornings, as I began, ‘The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,’ her eyes fluttered open and she began to whisper the words right along with me. ... Those were the last words that I heard Pamela say,” said Rev. Jamie White. “These were words that Pamela had deep in her bones, a promise of God’s love for her, a love that she had learned to trust so fully and root her so deeply that she could then pour herself out for the sake of others.”

Read more about Atkinson.

The most detailed look yet at the financial life of Joseph Smith and the early years of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is now available in a new ebook released by the Church Historian’s Press, Amy Ortiz reported.

The background: Joseph Smith was “very cognizant” of the diverse religious community he was building and the various needs of early Saints, said archivist Sharalyn D. Howcroft, who worked with a team of historians and editors on the ebook, Ortiz reported.

Here are three key points, as reported by Ortiz:

What researchers are saying: “I cannot get past how awe-inspiring it is to see the sacrifice of the average member,” Howcroft said. “Most names we would never have come across in our plumbing the depths of church history, and yet there they are, and their sacrifice is written.”

Read more about the ebook.

We put together a calendar list of events and activities going on around the state of Utah during this month. Check it out, and let us know if we are missing anything!

Here are some highlights for events in Utah today: 

Please reach out to me at [email protected] if you have any thoughts, feedback or ideas you would like to share!

✨Cheers ✨

— Gambles