Ever since I moved here in 1991, I’ve loved and always selected the Utah license plate with the skier and caption “Greatest Snow on Earth.” Our awesome snow seasons had always been a way of enticing my friends and family back in Georgia to come visit. Some great memories include sledding and making snow forts with my kids, and even shoveling my flat roof in Cottonwood Heights in 1993, when we had a 98-inch snow season.
But in the last decade, it seems like snow has become less and less a part of our winter life here. I graphed the snow data from the National Weather Service in Salt Lake City from 1970 through the 2019-20 season. Using the graph’s trend line, it showed an average snow accumulation reduction of around 44% in Salt Lake City. Ugh.
(Graphic courtesy of Gregg S. Alex)
This probably confirms what many of you were thinking, too. And it certainly adds credibility to the climate change predictions made by NASA.
I don’t know about you guys, but this has me both disappointed (I miss the snow!) and worried because of the impacts to our landscape, flora, fauna and lifestyle. I want to help reduce the severity of the long-term effects on Utah, so I installed solar panels and drive a high-mpg car. But to really make an impact, we need regulatory change. The proposal I’ve seen with the best balance of economy and energy usage is the Economic Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act. I encourage Utahns to take a look at the revenue-neutral provisions, bipartisan support and grassroots efforts to lobby our elected officials.
Not likely we can reverse the overall trend any time soon, but we can certainly reduce the severity of future impacts. The alternative is to accept defeat, which I refuse to do — because I want to build snow forts with my grandkids!
Gregg S. Alex, earth science teacher, Juan Diego High School, Draper
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