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Utah Lake Effect Snow

The Great Salt Lake effect: bands on northwest flow that favor the Salt Lake Valley, the Tooele Valley, and the Cottonwood Canyons of the Wasatch southeast of the lake.

Lake Great Salt Lake drives this belt
Snowiest catalog station (Salt Lake City)
52 in
Belt cities on this site
1
Season core
Nov to Feb

Utah snowbelt at a glance

NOAA NCEI normals, 1991-2020
52 in
Salt Lake City
SALT LAKE CITY INTL AP, UT US

Seasonal snowfall normals from NOAA NCEI’s 1991-2020 U.S. Climate Normals, each attributed to its named station. Belt gradients are sharp enough that these single stations understate or overstate nearby towns by feet per season.

The mechanism

Where and why lake effect snow hits Utah

Utah's version is real, agency-studied, and small next to the Great Lakes machine. Published research (Yeager and colleagues, 2013) found lake-effect periods contributed about 5.1 to 8.4 percent of cool-season precipitation at sites in the Cottonwood and Oquirrh ranges from 1998 to 2009. The lake is a contributor to the Wasatch's famous snow, not the main engine; elevation and Pacific storms do most of the work.

The setup

Cold northwest flow behind Pacific fronts crossing the warm, hypersaline lake.

The geography

The Wasatch Front rising 6,000 feet directly downwind, which converts modest bands into serious mountain snow.

The off switch

No freeze switch at all: the Great Salt Lake is too salty to freeze, so the effect is available all winter.

“A lake effect snowfall along the Wasatch Front is typically a post cold frontal event in which the duration of snowfall downwind of the lee shore is extended in cold, northwest flow.”

David M. Carpenter, NWS Salt Lake City, NOAA Technical Memorandum NWS WR-190 (1985)
Satellite view of parallel lake effect snow bands streaming southeast off all five Great Lakes
Cloud streets streaming off the Great Lakes in a NOAA satellite view. Each white stripe is a band of convective snow; where a stripe meets the shore is where the belt lives. “Lake effect snow bands over the Great Lakes region” — NOAA — Public domain
City by city

Utah snowbelt cities

Each city page carries monthly NOAA normals for its named station, the local mechanism, and the live NWS product feed.

The season shape, at Salt Lake City

Monthly snowfall normals (inches), SALT LAKE CITY INTL AP, UT US, NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 normals. The lake effect signature: a steep November rise while the lake is warmest.
Satellite view of snow covered belts downwind of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, both lakes open water
The belts made visible: NASA MODIS, January 13, 2017. Snow-covered ground traces exactly where wind and fetch deliver lake effect off Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, with brown snow-free land upwind. “Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, and the Finger Lakes” — Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC — Public domain
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Live, as issued

NWS winter products active in Utah right now

Every active NWS winter product whose zones touch Utah, read live from api.weather.gov and reproduced exactly as issued, with issuer and timestamps.

Checking api.weather.gov for active winter weather products…

Why the mixed product names: for the 2017-2018 winter the NWS consolidated its lake effect products into the general winter suite. The Lake Effect Snow Warning came back on October 1, 2019, but per Service Change Notice 19-63 its use is “optional at Regional discretion” and offices may still issue Winter Storm Warnings “with the lake effect component specified in the ‘What’ section”. The old Lake Effect Snow Watch and Advisory were never reinstated. So this page passes through every winter product for the area and tags the ones whose own NWS text names lake effect.

Whiteout and travel decisions belong with the National Weather Service (weather.gov winter safety) and the Utah 511 system (511 road conditions). NWS products above are reproduced as issued.

The record book

Documented Utah lake effect events

Utah’s lake effect record book is thinner than the Great Lakes states’, because the effect here is a contributor, not the main engine. The agency literature on it is linked in the quote above.

A dark wall of lake effect snow advancing across Lake Erie toward the Buffalo waterfront
The leading edge of the November 2014 band bearing down on Buffalo, from the NOAA Photo Library. NWS Buffalo's summary says the edge was so sharp "many described it as a wall of snow." “Snowfall descending on the Buffalo Southtowns” — NOAA Photo Library, NWS Collection — Public domain
Common questions

Utah lake effect snow FAQ

Cars buried to their rooflines in snow at a street corner near Buffalo after the November 2014 storm
Town Line, New York, after November 2014: what 5 or more feet in three days looks like at ground level. Every belt in the Great Lakes has its own version of this photograph. “Winter Storm Knife - Town Line, NY” by Anthony Quintano, CC BY 2.0
Elsewhere

Lake effect snow in other states

Utah winter forecastNOAA's seasonal outlook, first snow timing, and snowfall normals statewide.Lake effect snow, nationwideAll the belts, the mechanism in NWS words, and the Erie versus Ontario contrast.Salt Lake City lake effect pageThe city-level cut: monthly normals, mechanism, live products.
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Snowfall normals: NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 U.S. Climate Normals, by named station (public domain). Alerts: api.weather.gov, reproduced as issued. Record events cite the NWS office write-ups linked inline. Ice statistics are our arithmetic on NOAA GLERL daily records, labeled as such. No road or safety advice of ours appears on this page.
Hero image: “Big Cottonwood Canyon winter” by GyozaDumpling, CC BY-SA 4.0