The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-12-09
SALT FROM THE CLOUDS.
Saline Showers Are Peculiar to Utah
 and Wyoming.
From the Chicago Inter Ocean.

From the Chicago Inter Ocean.
 One of the curious phenomena of Utah and Wyoming is an occasional rainfall of salt water. Recently there was re- ported to the weather bureau an instance of rainfall of this sort throughout belt of country extending from ogden, Utah. to Evanston, Wyo. This shower of rain was so strongly impregnated with salt that the clothes of persons upon whom it fell were, when dried, thinly crusted with a white powder, which was nothing more than common salt. Umbrellas were quite white with it, and panes of glass in the windows were rendered for the time opaque.
 According to this report, the whole town of Evanston looked as if it had been whitewashed. When the sky cleared the roofs glistened in the sun if with frozen snow. The weather bureau man estimated that in the town of Evanston an amount of salt equivalent to twenty eight tons had fallen.
 The shower lasted about two hours, and during all this time the rain which fell was saline.
 This phenomenon is far from being a new one. The wind was from the west, and all the rains that are impregnaIed with salt in that region come from that quarter. The cause is not hard to find. 1t is simply the Great Salt lake of Utah. that vast body of intensely salt water out of which, under favorable conditions, considerable quantity of salt may be taken up into the atmosphere, to be pre- cipitated later upon the surrounding coun- try.
 Evanston is about ffty-one miles from the nearest waters of Great Salt lake, and it is regarded as a somewhat re- markable fact that so great @ quantity of salt should have been borne so far.
 There is, however, another opportunity than that presented by the Great Salt lake itself for the impregnation of the air with salt in the central basin. These are countless Impressions all through the vast reggon between the Rock and Sierra Nevada mountains, which are nothing less than great salt lakes dried up. Great Salt lake itself Is becoming more and more salt from year to year. The same process has taken place in other depres- sions until the water has literally turned to salt
 Compared with Mono lake or Owens lake the waters of Great Salt lake seem lmpid. Owens lake in a sense supplies showers of soda water instead of salt water. for it's waters. in addition to being salt, are the most strongly impregnated with soda of any lacustrine basin in the United States. It is estimated that the quantity of soda deposited in the basin Of owens lake is no less than 120000,0G) tons.
 So common is salt in some form in the closed basins of the west that peaks and hills of sale, like those which line the slopes of Death valley, are anything but rare Here and there fine salt is driven before the wind like drifting snow in certain desert depresisons.
 The United States is not the only coun- try in which salt showers occur. In Paris itself, when rains straight from the Atlantic have been borne so far Inward, perceptible quanties of sodium chloride have been found in the rainwater. In England and Ireland coatings of fine salt have been found on the trees many miles inland after a heavy rain from the sea, and showers no less saline than that of Evanston have fallen in the neighborhood of the Caspian sea.