SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — The spring snowstorm that hit the Wasatch Front this week brought wet, sloppy snow to the valley floors and left the mountains with up to two feet of powder.
This must be another bit of good news for the Great Salt Lake, right? According to Jordan Clayton, supervisor of the Utah Snow Survey, the answer is “yes,” but it’s limited.
Earlier this month, Clayton’s team released the latest forecast for the Great Salt Lake’s rise this spring, estimating the lake will see inflows of around 550,000 acre feet of water between May and July.
An acre-foot is a measurement term used to describe water volume. It’s the amount of water that would cover an acre of land in a foot of water.
With this significant expected inflow, Clayton’s team predicted the Great Salt Lake’s south arm could peak at roughly 4,195 feet in elevation, give or take about a half foot.
According to the Great Salt Lake Commissioner’s Office, the south arm of the lake is already around that level. But should it rise a half-foot higher, it’d reach heights not seen in more than a decade.
This recent storm could help the lake get there, although Clayton noted that this week’s moisture was limited to only part of the Great Salt Lake basin.
“There was a particularly large amount of new snow water added along the Wasatch Front, but other areas that feed to the Great Salt Lake did not receive nearly as much,” he said in an email.
As the spring runoff is well underway, Utah’s reservoirs remain mostly full, particularly the ones that empty into the Great Salt Lake.
Last month, Great Salt Lake Commissioner Brian Steed said that water conservancy districts have released flows into the lake and plan to do so again during the summer.
While the lake typically reaches its yearly peak around May 1, it’ll be later this year. During the summer, evaporation causes the flat, high-elevation lake to shrink roughly two feet.
According to Steed, as the lake fills up and expands, evaporation increases along the lake’s shallow periphery.
