Hi. welcome to Utah. today, according to http://airnow.gov, salt lake city has the worst air quality in the nation. it’s like being hooked up to an exhaust ventilator. The air literally smells and tastes awful.
Here is what a toxic death blanket of killer smog looks like when approaching salt lake from the south. Visibly disgusting.
I’ve added a blue arrow for greater visibility.
Inversion (in which a deviation in the normal change in air temperature + altitude). This leads to Pollution: Bad air gets trapped in the valley and just sort of hangs around making everything miserable.
In this picture, between the trees, you should be able to see parts of downtown (I took this on a hill above town). But you can’t, because of the smog (not fog). There hasn’t been a glimpse of blue sky all day, but hopefully an approaching winter snow (with 5 or so inches of snow expected) will pop atmospheric cap and disperse the badness. (Also, SNOW!)
Because Cirrus clouds are for coming and going. It’s all about perspective.
Goodbye summer weather.
And also a Rainbow.
A storm drifted near the mountains to the east of Salt Lake City. First there was the rainbow, blooming from the mountain. Then there was a sort of hazy rainbow just to the right of the original one. You can’t see it in my picture unfortunately. I like to think it was a ghost.
The rainbows stuck around for over an hour, until the clouds came closer and caught the colors from the sunset. The camera, as good as it is, doesn’t do justice to being there.
Sorry about that.
Being the weather nerd that I am, one of the reasons I was looking forward to visiting Florida was a chance to experience some of the tropical rain and intense lightning (from a safe place) often seen throughout the state. It’s not so common in Salt Lake City.
So as Beth and I were driving out for a milkshake tonight, we saw this storm passing to the north of us, making its way across scenic State Road A1A and out onto the water.
