The deadly virus ravaged the state for all of 2021 as the pandemic has yet to let up, even as more Utahns become vaccinated.
Amid all of that, Utah’s economy remained robust and the state’s housing market saw a year like no other.
The Utah Department of Health considers the transmission rate in all but three of the state’s 29 counties high or very high.
15 as one year since the first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine were made available to health care workers.
The Utah Legislature specifically barred school districts from requiring masks, so at the start of the school year, local health departments in Salt Lake, Grand and Summit counties issued emergency health orders for masking in elementary schools.
Severe drought left Utah and part of the West, Southwest and Great Plains parched for much of the year.
In response to drought, water providers across the state instituted voluntary or mandatory cutbacks on secondary watering on landscapes, which makes up a whopping 60% of Utah’s municipal and industrial water consumption.
With 95% of Utah’s water supply coming from snowpack, many more storms are needed to reach an average snowpack.
In a word, the housing market in Utah and some places in the West was crazy.
Wasatch Front homes were on the market a slim median five days in the first quarter of the year, a huge drop from 28 days in the first quarter of 2020.
Miller auto dealerships, a portfolio of over 70 auto centers across the West that were all owned for over four decades by the household name.
What was expected to be a routine counting of Electoral College votes in Congress turned into a deadly siege when hundreds of election protesters who supported soon-to-be-former President Donald Trump stormed the U.S.
In the Senate trial, Romney was among seven Republicans and all 50 Democrats who voted to remove Trump from office.
Ignoring maps drawn by the voter-approved Independent Redistricting Commission, the Republican-controlled Utah Legislature adopted new congressional district boundaries of its own making in a November special session.
During its 45-day general session earlier in the year, lawmakers exerted legislative control over COVID-19 restrictions.
A study found the Dixie name problematic for students and alumni and had hindered the university’s ability to recruit students, faculty, staff and had limited its ability to build partnerships and obtain grants and funding.
While the state has more overall jobs than it did before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the job participation rate is still lagging behind pre-pandemic levels.
Spencer Cox penned a letter to President Joe Biden, telling the administration that the state stands ready to welcome refugees from Afghanistan.
In all, 765 Afghan refugees who fled the country as the Taliban overtook Kabul were scheduled to be resettled in Utah.
The disappearance and suspected murder of Gabby Petito captured the nation’s attention, and for a time focused on southern Utah.
Petito’s body was found near an undeveloped camping area bordering Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming in September.