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Show August 14, 2014 DROUGHT EFFECT 11 ■ iii.i hi Great Salt Lake isn't so 'great' anymore ... .,.;.* v;''. 4, V. 1 ■■a V . V .- >-i— .j**^ I'^egSw*****"' / L A jW*' ...i "'v ■\ V . „ «* - Aita& . BRIANASCROGGINS/Standard-Examiner Utah's drought has long-term effects on Great Salt Lake. The ground at Farmington Bay in Hooper seen Tuesday is dry and cracked. It is estimated that for every 1-foot of increase or decrease in the lake level, about 44,000 acres of mud flats are inundated or exposed. By LYNN ARAVE Standard-Examiner correspondent Is the level of Great Salt Lake headed for an all-time low? That record is possible, because of the drought in Utah. "It's pretty low," Andrew Rupke, geologist with the Utah Geological Survey, said of the lake's current elevation of 4,193.8 feet above sea level. The lake's record low was 4,191 feet above sea level in 1963, and its record high was 4,212 feet in both the early 1870s and again in 1986-87. Rupke said Great Salt Lake typically reaches its lowest level of the year in the late fall — October or November. So, the lake level could plunge almost another foot in the next several months, before increasing when the evaporation rate drops off, and precipitation and river inflow increases. "It could recede a little bit more," he said. The lake is now lower than it has been in about 50 years. It has also been lower than 4,194.5 feet in just 14 different years since the Mormon pioneers arrived in 1847. Its long-term average elevation is considered to be 4,200 feet. Robert Gillies, the state clima- tologist and director of the Utah Climate Center in Logan, is convinced the level of Great Salt Lake is going to keep dropping for the near future. "The declining trend of lake level is going to continue for the next two, three years," he said. "Why? For the past three years, since 2011, Utah has been in a drought, and the Great Salt Lake is known to respond to the drought condition with an approximated delay of three years." In August 2011, the lake's level was 4,198.1 feet, meaning it dropped 4.3 feet in just three years. The largest decline happened from 2012 to 2013, when the lake level sank 2 feet. In the past year, it has declined 1.2 feet. So, if the lake declined even just a foot a year for the next two years, by the late summer of 2016, it would be at about 4,191.8 See GREAT, Page 3A |
