The Great Salt Lake — Losing Its Greatness?
2 days ago Kip Hansen
Guest Essay by Kip Hansen — 1 April 2023
[Note: There is some danger in posting an essay on the 1st of April of any year – danger that it will be taken as an April Fool’s joke. This, however is no joke, I only wish it was. Those hoping for a good April Fool’s, see this piece from CCNow, however, they don’t seem to realize that it is a joke.]
The Great Salt Lake, in northern Utah, is one of the iconic symbols of the Great Basin and Great Basin Desert regions of the American West. It is impossible to write about the Great Salt Lake without mentioning that, culturally, the entire region was once called “Mormon Country”, recognizing the influence of the Latter-Day Saint immigrants that settled the Salt Lake Valley, and much the American West, all the way from Chihuahua, Mexico to Alberta, Canada.
The Wiki summary:
“The Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere and the eighth-largest terminal lake in the world. It lies in the northern part of the U.S. state of Utah and has a substantial impact upon the local climate, particularly through lake-effect snow. It is a remnant of Lake Bonneville, a prehistoric body of water that covered much of western Utah.”
What exactly is a terminal lake? Basically: “a drainage basin that normally retains water and allows no outflow to other external bodies of water, such as rivers or oceans, where drainage converges instead into lakes or swamps, permanent or seasonal, that equilibrate through evaporation.” [ source ] More simply, it is a lake into which water flows but does not flow out, water only leaves through evaporation. The Dead Sea between Jordan and Israel is another well-known example.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2023/04/01/the-great-salt-lake-losing-its-greatness/
