The forecast climbs to 110 by Saturday, 140 drivers bring the state's biggest demolition derby to Spanish Fork, and Timpanogos Cave sits at 45 degrees the whole time

The National Weather Service forecast for Provo climbs all week: 99 today, 103 Thursday, 105 Friday, and 110 on Saturday. The overnight lows barely help, sitting in the low to mid 70s, which means houses that lose their heat by opening windows at night don't get the chance. Saturday is also the busiest outdoor day of the summer here. The Utah County Fair runs 10 to 10 in Spanish Fork, the demolition derby goes at 7, Salem opens Salem Days, Folkfest plays its final night in Springville, and Highland closes out the Fling. Nearly all of it is outside and nearly all of it peaks in the afternoon. Up in Lehi, fire chief Jeremy Craft has been watching the other half of this. His crews have kept every grass fire small this season and the city has lost zero structures, but he's blunt about why the margin is thin: with no moisture in the ground, the fires that do start grow faster and burn hotter than they used to. State fire restrictions are still on, no open fires anywhere, and he's asking for extra care through the heat. The practical version: shift everything you can to the morning. The farmers market opens at 9. Cave tours start at 7. The fairgrounds open at 10 on Saturday and the shaded barns are the coolest thing on the property. Then give the afternoon away and come back after seven, when the derby and the concerts start anyway.

Provo reopened 820 North over the Provo River last week, closing out an eight-month rebuild of the crossing at roughly 850 West. The replacement carries new vehicle lanes with a center turn lane, bike lanes on both sides, and paved pedestrian paths separated from traffic by concrete barriers. The city puts the expected service life at about 75 years. The bridge it replaced went in back in 1960, so this corner of the northwest side has been living with a detour and a narrow, aging span for most of a year.

The county's first Pioneer Day fireworks over Utah Lake went off on July 24, but only half of it did. An afternoon thunderstorm put the crews two hours behind on anchoring the barges, and by the time they got to the west side the wind had come up enough that they couldn't anchor all four corners safely. The Saratoga Springs show was called off. The American Fork barge fired as planned. It's a rough first year for something the county spent months building toward, and the honest read is that anchoring a barge on Utah Lake in a July thunderstorm is a harder problem than the schedule allowed for.

Sundance runs a Neapolitan pizza pop-up on four dates a year and today is the third of them. Dough starts with Caputo 00 flour and a 72-hour ferment, it cooks in Gozney ovens outdoors, and the toppings lean on Creminelli sopressata and prosciutto. The location rotates between the Deli Courtyard, the Creekside Courtyard, and the Lookout Deck. It runs 11am to 3pm or until the pizza is gone, whichever comes first.

The Springville Museum of Art is running its 52nd annual juried quilt show through September 26, with work from quilters across the state in every size and style the form allows. It's paired with Art Loops: From Sketch to Street, which lays out the drawings and process behind the public artwork installed around downtown Springville. Admission is free, parking is free, and Wednesday is the one day the doors stay open until 8pm.

The Provo Farmers Market runs Saturdays at Pioneer Park, 9am to 2pm, with more than 200 rotating vendors across produce, bakers, honey, crafts and hot food, plus live music. It's the biggest market in the county by vendor count and it runs through October. Late July into August is when the stone fruit and the sweet corn both land, which is the best two weeks of the whole season to walk it.

Utah put four past the North Carolina Courage on Saturday, the most goals the club has ever scored in a match, and it moved them into second in the league. Tonight they get the only team ahead of them. Washington comes to Sandy on three points more with a game in hand on nobody, so this one is worth the standings on its own.

The Bees lost five of six to the Omaha Storm Chasers at home, and three of those losses came with the offense putting up seven or more runs. They went down 9-8, 8-3, 12-9 and 10-7 before finally taking one 8-4 on Saturday, then dropped the finale 4-3. Pitching, not hitting, is what sank the homestand.

Rowley's is a working fruit farm at the south end of the county that grows its own peaches, cherries, apples and berries, makes its own ice cream in a creamery on site, and runs a from-scratch bakery next to it. The order to get in the last week of July is the apple cider slushee with caramel soft serve dropped in it, and a bag of the apple cider donuts to take home. Peach season is running right now, which is the one window a year the peaches-and-cream ice cream is made from fruit picked a few hundred yards away.

Dance companies from six countries close out the festival's fortieth year Thursday through Saturday in Springville.

Parade at 9, Scottish heavy athletics all day, and fireworks at 10 Saturday in Highland.

Eight days of free swim nights, a junior rodeo and a movie in the park kick off Saturday in Lindon.

Lehi has come through the worst of a drought summer without losing a single structure to wildfire, and the Fourth of July passed with zero fireworks-caused fires, something fire chief Jeremy Craft says he has never seen in thirty years on the job. Crews did handle a string of small grass fires, plus two on the 24th that started around 2 to 3am and are still under investigation. Craft's read on why the record is thinner than it looks: with no moisture in the ground, the grass fires that do start grow faster and burn hotter than the same fire would in a normal year. State fire restrictions remain in place with no open fires permitted, and he's asking for extra care through the heat wave now moving in.

The annual U.S. News Best States rankings put Utah first overall for the fourth consecutive year, on the back of second place in economy, second in fiscal stability and fourth in infrastructure. The number underneath it is the one worth reading here: Utah ranks 48th out of 50 in natural environment, a category built from air quality, drinking water quality and pollution, and the state has finished in the bottom five of that category every year since it was added in 2018. Geography carries a lot of the blame, since the Wasatch Front's mountain walls trap pollution in the valley rather than letting it move out. That's the same bowl Utah County sits in.

BYU is putting its new School of Medicine on the West Campus property in Provo, the old Provo High site, where demolition on the south end of the former high school has already been done. The accreditation body finished its site visit in June, and the decision on preliminary accreditation is expected in October. If it goes through, the founding class arrives in fall 2027 at 60 students, the maximum a new medical school is allowed to enroll. For a county whose health system leans heavily on doctors trained elsewhere, a medical school on the west side of Provo changes the pipeline over a couple of decades rather than a couple of years.