Most people living within 50 miles of the Great Salt Lake have suffered through the unexpectedly heavy snowstorms that can wallop the region in the fall and spring. But soon these storms may not be quite as unexpected.
Better predictions are possible through an innovative network for sharing weather data called the Utah Mesonet. They should improve even more, thanks to an instrument capsule that is like nothing so much as a space probe.Instead of tearing through the methane atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan, this stainless steel cylinder -- a device a yard long by a foot in diameter -- is destined for the strange underwater world of the Great Salt Lake.
Data the station will radio back should be priceless to weather foecasters, since "lake effect" storms are strongly influenced by water conditions on the lake. Knowing the exact conditions, especially the water temperature, will help pinpoint where storms will blast ashore.
But the project faces formidable challenges.
"It's a rough environment," said a chief planner, John D. Horel, professor of meteorology at the University of Utah.
Salinity, which can corrode instrument packages, is less in the southern arm but is still a devastating 8.4 percent -- nearly two and a half times that of the ocean. Waves kicked up by storms can tower six to eight feet tall, and they pack a hard wallop because of the water's unusual density.
The instrument capsule is under construction at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a great ocean-research facility based in Woods Hole, Mass. Next month, the device is to be suspended in the lake, where it will take detailed measurements to help weather scientists make more precise predictions.
Anchored to the bottom by a long tether and held in place by a yard-wide aluminum sphere bobbing on the surface, the device will use solar cells to charge its batteries. Information will be radioed back as readings are taken.
Solar panels can be an iffy matter on the lake, as salt layers tend to encrust everything in the vicinity. Researchers probably will need to return periodically to remove salt.
Even the antenna that will broadcast information back by radio is a concern. As Horel pointed out, "A pelican trying to stand on the antenna . . . will pretty much end communications."
The device is to be anchored several miles west of Antelope Island in the southern arm of the lake, he said.
Every hour it will measure and radio back information on surface air temperature, checked by a thermometer mounted on the buoy; sunlight; surface water temperature; chlorophyll content of the water; turbidity, and water temperature at depths of nine, 15 and 22 feet. Although chlorophyll levels aren't important for forecasting weather, they are vital to the lake's brine shrimp industry.
It will be a sophisticated addition to the Great Salt Lake Monitoring Project (possibly a temporary name, says Horel). Other stations checking conditions on Utah's inland sea are at Hat, Gunnison and Antelope islands.
The system is coordinated through an ambitious, multi-agency network that Horel set up in 1994, the Utah Mesonet. Data pour in continuously from the three island stations and scores of more conventional facilities in towns and bases around the lake.
As it arrives, the information goes onto the Internet at http://www.met.utah.edu/mesonet. Anyone can check overall conditions or find precise weather data at particular points -- for example, the mouth of Parley's Canyon.
"This is a collaborative effort," Horel added. More than 25 organizations maintain 197 weather stations in Utah alone, with 50 in Tooele County because of the need to know weather conditions because of military activities there like the Army's chemical weapons incinerator and Dugway Proving Ground.
The National Weather Service, Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, U.S. Geological Survey, Utah Geological Survey and other agencies all contribute.
Ski resorts feed in information. Stations already are sending data to the Mesonet from venues for the 2002 Winter Games, instruments set up by Olympics planners who will need to know as much as they can about the weather once the Games begin.
The Mesonet also can pick up weather data from another 273 stations in nearby states.
Key to the Mesonet are Horel; Tom Potter, director, recently retired as regional director of the National Weather Service, now working with the University of Utah; Larry Dunn of the National Weather Service and lead scientist Mike Splitt, from the U.
"It's used pretty extensively," he said. "Typically about 2,000 people are accessing the Mesonet and downloading a whole bunch of graphics on a frequent basis."
Users include wind surfers who want to know conditions before they head to Rush Lake or Deer Creek Reservoir; the Utah Department of Transportation, which has to make decisions about snow removal, and skiers who want to find out the latest dope about snow at ski resorts.
"From a forecaster's standpoint, the Mesonet is just great, because it puts all of this data together in one location for easy access," said Dave Sanders, lead forecaster for the National Weather Service.
The Gunnison Island station was completed on May 22, while Antelope Island began sending readings earlier. Instruments were installed on Hat Island last September. This site already records a bit of information from the lake itself, he said.
Hat Island's station perches at the island's highest point, about 75 feet above lake surface. A 200-foot cable stretches from there into the lake, and out 20 feet offshore. At the end of the cable, a thermistor checks water temperature and relays it back to the station for broadcast.
The underwater link is a tenuous one, as scientists always envisioned. Communications are starting to fail. They can't be restored before May, though, because of concerns about disturbing the seagull rookery there. By May, the birds have finished nesting for the year and are not as sensitive to intruders.
So the answer is to suspend the probe in the lake.
"The target date for putting it in is a pretty abysmal time of year, January," Horel said. But that's the right time to do it, "just before a lot of the algae bloom and the hatching of the brine shrimp."