Bonneville salt flats in winter1/31/2024 ![]() “I’m actually optimistic that this upcoming year, if we have a really nice, hot summer that evaporates all the brine, will be good for racing,” Bernau said.Īs for the photo opportunities out at the flats, Bernau said even with the flooding, they’re still there. The water will go, but the salt will stay. “Having a wetter climate, or more rainfall, is better for the long-term health of the salt crust,” he said. He said having this much water at the Salt Flats is a great thing to see. “What is most likely to lead to a racing event being cancelled is if we have a rainfall occurring in the summer,” Bernau said. Visitors still flock to the Salt Flats, but the unusually high water makes some people, particularly those in the racing community, nervous. Watch at 10 for some stunning images of the Salt Flats, and what scientists says all this water means for racing, photography and other recreation. We took a trip out there in to get a closer look. The largest extant remnants of the lake today are the Great Salt Lake, Utah Lake and Sevier Lake.“All that salt that dissolves when we have all this rain, it’s not going anywhere,” Bernau said. The lake was named after Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Bonneville, an officer in the US military, fur trapper, and explorer of the American West. This released over the course of a year, more than 1,200 cu mi of water into the Snake River, and lowered the lake more than 430 feet. While the lake receded from its maximum extent over thousands of years, one particular event, the Bonneville Flood has been documented in the geologic record, when an alluvial dam on Marsh creek, part of the drainage of the Snake River, was finally breached by rising lake levels. ![]() ![]() ![]() At its greatest extent 18,000 years ago, the lake was more than 980 feet deep, and covered over 20,000 square miles, nearly the size of Lake Michigan. Lake Bonneville, the result of cooler temperatures and higher precipitation during the Late Pleistocene, was the largest of four deep water lakes to exist in the Great Basin over the last 800,000 years. The Bonneville Salt Flats are part of the lake bed of Lake Bonneville. The high water table this time of year leaves the flats covered in water, which on a calm day offer a glass like reflection of this desolate desert landscape. The sun sets over Utah's Bonneville Salt Flats in winter. ![]()
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