A springtime blizzard made me contemplate the precipitation. It was a few days before May, and I was brushing powder off my windshield. Utah license plates boast the state has the greatest snow on Earth. As I have never been skiing and have lived mostly in places where snow has only a minimal appearance, I looked into this claim to see what makes Utah’s snow so noteworthy.
When I first arrived at Bryce in mid-March, there was snow on the ground and throughout the canyon. During one of the first weeks, temperatures hardly rose above twenty degrees as we were pummeled with snow. Then we received a few weeks of relative warmth until one stretch at April’s end when it snowed nearly every day. Sometimes I would see little pockets of snow clinging to the roof shingles in the morning and a light covering on the dirt. By the afternoon, the snow would melt, but this particular week produced whiteout after whiteout just as I began to anticipate the warmer spring weather.
Utah averages about 500 inches of snow each year, and sometimes the numbers can reach above 700 with the aid of El Nino. There are usually forty winter storms, 18 of which dump over a foot of snow in one day. It rarely sprinkles here. Precipitation in Utah is more of an all or nothing deal. With the exception of low desert areas, summer can be very brief. Depending on the elevation, certain areas can receive roughly 250 days of winter per year. Snow in June is not out of the question.
Despite these impressive numbers, there are snowier areas in the country. Mount Baker in the state of Washington receives nearly 650 inches of snow annually. On an international scale, a ski resort on the Hokkaido Island of Japan receives the most short-term snowfall due to its brief, yet intense monsoon season. But the claim of the greatest snow on Earth has more to do with the quality rather than the quantity.
The Wasatch Mountain Range near Salt Lake City is considered one of the best places to ski in the entire world. The reason for this has to do with the Goldilocks principle. If the snow is too light and dry, there is no stable base, and the snow shouldn’t be too heavy and wet. The mixture has to be just right, and Utah apparently has the perfect snow density——an ideal balance between powder and salt content thanks to the lake effect.
Storms brewing in the Pacific Ocean blow eastward across the Sierra Nevada Mountains. When the snow is unleashed in California and Nevada, it is fairly wet, packing a ten to twelve percent moisture density. As the clouds pass over the Great Salt Lake, they dry out and become colder. These conditions create snowflakes called dendrites. These are the classic snowflakes you often cut out in arts and crafts in elementary school. They are light-weight and have a symmetrical, crystal shape that pack nicely together. The ski slopes of Utah generally have a dense base with a fluffy coating of dendrites on top.
This combination produces an ideal body. To achieve this, snowstorms should be frequent, but too much snowfall would offset this delicate balance. These “just right” conditions of Utah’s mountains enable skiers to float on the top layer without scraping the ground.
I once received a job offer at Alta, a popular ski resort in Utah that is mentioned in Forbes Magazine’s Top Ten in North America in 2016. I didn’t accept the position because the pay was too low (roughly $1,000 net profit per month). The interviewee said people take the job primarily for the free skiing pass. Apparently, the snow in Utah has such a powerful grip for some that it’s a bigger priority than one’s income.
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