The weather in Salt Lake City and the surrounding areas has been quite interesting this past week.  I've always enjoyed different weather.  That's one reason I like living in Salt Lake.  I was happy for this assignment simply because there is weather activity here that fascinates me.  

This week we had some snow (Oct 4).  In Salt Lake, a lot of our weather is influenced by the "lake effect."  The lake effect essentially means that colder air is moving across the warmer water.  When these temperatures and energies dance with each other, it snows on the shores.  If that colder air isn't cold enough to create snow, it’s simply rain.  

On Saturday the snow left and it warmed up quite a bit.  There are various reasons that a storm moves in and out of an area.  In our geographic region, the north-west winds are a huge factor in moving things along.  These winds come from the Pacific Ocean.  I think many people would be surprised to learn just how much our climate is influenced by something so far away.  Our mountain range also influences the weather by "trapping" in storm systems.  

During the next few days following Saturday, the temperature stayed in the upper 70's.  But once Thursday came another storm dropped in.  One thing that was interesting about the storm that came on Thursday was that it cut in further south.  When this happened, the weather from the north and south collide and we get wind.  

Because we are in a valley, we get quite a bit of wind here.  Call me crazy, but I love the wind.  Some of the wind these past few days was quite intense.  The wind was strongest after our cold front came through.  This would be due to air from the high pressure of the west, blowing into the low pressure from the east.  This creates some intense winds.  

We also have mountains.  Often times the clouds form around our mountain peaks when the warmer air from the valley raises up (the warm air has water vapor in it from the lake) along the mountains then mixes with the cooler air.  This forms clouds.  Usually the clouds around the mountains are cumulous clouds.    

We had a cold front come through Salt Lake the other day.  It brought moisture and lots of clouds.  When cold air comes through our valley, it typically comes from the west.  Then it pushes the warmer air up and out.  Therefore, the cooler air stays. There's two factors that result in a "front;” barometric pressure and temperature.  In the winter, the barometric pressure goes down.  

As the cold front moves from west to east, it picks up moisture from the warmer water of the Great Salt Lake.  This moisture combines with moisture of the cold front resulting in an increase in total moisture.  As the weather front continues east and the moisture laden air begins to rise as it intersects the mountain, further condensation creates greater moisture called "the lake effect." 

To summarize, our weather in Salt Lake City has the correct climatic factors to create many different weather conditions.  It is difficult to predict the weather here because of variations in temperature and topography.  Our mountains contribute to clouds forming at the peaks, the lake produces moisture and different air comes from the Pacific Ocean.