Too Much Snow!!!....?

The Wasatch Front has been POUNDED with snow this week!!! Well, that is if you are comparing things with last year. While last year was much dryer than normal, much of Utah's snow totals so far this year are still below average despite "so much" new snow. Mother Nature hasn't been too friendly this January giving us extremely cold temperatures associated with a polluted inversion and then dumping us with three days of snow. Here's a question for you, would you rather live in a cold, dirty inversion or drive in the snow? I would much rather have the snow. I can ski in snow. What ever you think, don't get too sick of the snow yet: we still need more.

My thermodynamics professor loves the snow, too. He spend most of his research studying the stuff that fall from the sky. At Alta Ski Resort he installed a camera to take pictures of snowflakes in free-fall. The following are a few pictures his camera has captured:

The following link includes the most recent snowflake pictures. If it is snowing at Alta new pictures will load up automatically. Enjoy! http://www.alta.com/pages/snowflakeshowcase.php

(Mobile ozone and temperature sensor: photo (c) BKB)

I am involved in a research project at the University of Utah studying ozone formation in the Uintah River Basin, near Roosevelt and Vernal, Utah. This is a picture of a device I helped build. On top is a temperature and humidity sensor. An ozone sensor is also attached. A driver can drive around the basin taking measurements while a GPS keeps track of the position the measurement was taken. Kind of a cool set up.