Winter?

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by Kptlt. Hellmut Neuerburg

One wouldn't think snow would be rare in a place that's 500 feet above sea level but it is because of how close to Puget Sound it is. The Port of Tacoma is about 20 miles from where I used to live.

Where it rains it can snow if it gets cold enough. The reality in Utah is that the Wasatch Front (Utah's three main population centers, Ogden, Salt Lake City and Provo-Orem, are within 40 miles of each other) marks the end of a desert that stretches 500 miles west to the Sierra Nevada mountains at the border between Nevada and California. Storms coming to Utah are almost always dry, and only pick up moisture as they pass over the Great Salt Lake. Even with that, the cities don't get more than 50" of snow per year on average, with a total rainfall of about 15". If not for the lake we wouldn't have any water to drink.