Salt Lake City from LandSat

Radiogal writes: "A great view of the area from NASA! See olympics.gsfc.nasa.gov." This is about all of the Olympics you're going to see on the web. :)

Comments

Temperature Inversions

[swillden]

You can't see much from space this week.. the temperature inversion is awful. You can't even see our beautiful mountains.

For any of you who are wondering what flikx is talking about:

The Salt Lake Valley is surrounded on the east and the west by tall mountains, and the exits from the valley on the north and south are relatively narrow. The effect is almost like a big bowl. Fairly frequently during the winter a pocket of warmer air gets trapped in the bowl underneath a layer of cold air. This situation is called a temperature inversion.

The problem with this situation is that the cold air acts like a lid on the valley, trapping all of the smog produced by cars, refineries, factories, etc. When this situation persists for more than a few days it can get pretty bad. Not L.A. kind of bad, but thick enough that it does ruin the view, and bad enough that use of wood-burning stoves and fireplaces are disallowed to help keep us from exceeding EPA regulations on particulate matter (and we still do, at times). The haze stays high enough that it doesn't really affect people, just the visibility.

Unfortunately, after several weeks of record cold, but quite clear, weather, an inversion began a few days back, and there's no telling how long it will persist. Up in the mountains at the ski resorts where the downhill events are will be clear and typically beautiful, but the medals plaza, skating rinks, hockey, etc. will be shrouded in brown smog.

Too bad, really, but there's nothing to be done. A good snowstorm will both scrub the haze from the air and has a good chance of breaking the inversion, so that's our best hope. There is a storm on the forecast for Friday morning, which would be perfect. The view of the mountains from the valley is absolutely spectacular when the air is clear.