Evening capital. (Annapolis, Md.) 1884-1910, 1906-11-28
salt FROM THE CLOUDS
Saline Showers Peculiar to
Utah and Wyoming.
DEPOSIT LIKE SNOW
Windows whitened and Clothes
Frosted With Tons of Solid Matter
Which Fell From the Heavens
This Phenomena Occurs in other
Countries.

One of the curious phenomena Of
Utah and Wyoming is an occasional
rainfall of salt water. Recently there
was reported to the Weather Bureau
an instance of a rainfall OF this sort
throughout a belt Of country extend
ing from Ogden, Utah, TO Evanston,
Wyoming. This shower of rain was
so strongly impregnated with salt
that the clothes of persons upon
whom it fell we're. when dried, thin
~ crusted with q white powder,
which was nothing more than com
mon salt. Umbrellas were quite
white with 1t. and panes of glass in
the windows we're rendered for the
time Opaque, says the Philadelphia
Record.
According TO this report. the whole
town of Evanston looked as If IL had
been whitewashed. When the sky
cleared the roofs glistenod In the sun
as If with frozen snow The Weather
Bureau man estimated that In the
town Evanston an amount of salt
equivalent to 2S 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 be-
ing q new one. The wind was from
the west. and all the rains that are
impregnated with salt in that region
come from that quarter. The cause
Is not hard to find. It is simply the
Great Salt Lake of Utah, that vast
body of intensely salt water, out of
which. under favorobale conditions,
considerable quantity of salt may
be taken up into the atmosphere, to
be precipitated later upon the sur
rounding country.
Evanston Is about So miles from
the nearest waters OF Great Salt
Lake. and it is regarded as a some
what remarkable fact that SO great
quantity of salt should have been
borne so far.
There Is, however, another oppor-
tunity than that presented by the
Great Salt Lake itself for the inn
pregnation of the air with salt in tho
Central Basin. There are countless
depressions all through the vast re-
gion between the Rocky and Sierra
Nevada Mountains, which are moth
ing less than great salt lakes dried
up. Great Salt Lake itself is becom-
ing more and more salt from year to
year; the same process has taken
place In other depressins until the
water has literally turned to salt.
Compared with Mono Lake. or
Ovens Lake, the waters of Great
Salt Lake seemed limpid 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
tho United States 1t Is estimated
that the quantity OF soda deposited
In the basin OF Owens Lake is no
less than 40, 900, 900 tons.
So common is salt in some form in
the closed basins of the West that
peaks and hills of salt, like those
which line the slopes OF Death Val.
ley, are anything but rare. Here and
there fine salt is driven before the
wind like drifting snow in certain
desert depression.
The United States is not the only
country I'm which salt showers occur.
In Paris itself. when rains straight
from the Atlantic have been borne so
far inward, perceptible quantities OF
sodium chloride have been found in
the rain water. In England and Ire
land coatings of fine salt have been
found on the trees many miles in
land after heavy rain from the sea.
and showers no less saline than that
Of Evanston have fallen in the neigh
borhood of the Caspian Sea.