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Why doesn't Utah get freezing rain, but snow instead? Does it have something to do with the humidity?
Nate
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The freezing rain (ice photo) comes from NBC affiliate KY3 in Springfield MO. This was taken a couple of weeks ago during their historic ice storm. Freezing rain is bad news, seriously bad. This particular storm meant no power for hundreds of thousands of people, some of it was out for two weeks. Freezing rain can damage trees, it causes massive amounts of accidents and is an overall nuisance. It offers no benefits to anyone or anything and is one of the most devastating types of weather.
We must recall the difference between a few types of rain and sleet and all that. Freezing rain is special. It is rain for sure but the rain drops aren't frozen. Freezing rain is rain the falls to the ground and freezes onto surfaces that are below freezing (32 and below). This means the roads have to be very cold and so do the trees and other things like fences or lawn ornaments. To have those surfaces at 32 or below, you need some cold air that's been around a few days.
Typically in Utah (in Salt Lake we're talking about), we don't spend much time with days on end below 32 degrees so our surfaces at least here in the city, aren't too cold for too long.
Another fun part to freezing rain in the winter is the very warm air aloft (higher up). The precipitation starts in the cloud as rain, then falls, then freezes on the ground. We don't get this set up a lot in the west in the winter. We get warm dry air higher up in high pressures but not a lot of warm moist air with warm fronts. We can have southern storms that move in and have a lot of warm air at the surface but typically our storms have colder air higher up meaning that the precipitation starts as snow and either stays snow or melts when it hits the city floor as regular rain.
That's not to say it doesn't happen because it does and has just not to the significance like some of our other states in the US. Storms with freezing rain often have warm fronts and Northeast winds. Northeast winds in Utah are downsloping which means they warm up! This can warm up the surface to above freezing. Also ahead of an area of low pressure, we have south winds, this too warms us up. Places with deeper cold air on the ground like Logan can see freezing rain a little more than SLC.
We just don't have the right weather set up for freezing rain. We do get sleet sometimes though. It starts as snow, melts to rain, then colder air in the lowest layer freezes the raindrop. That's a lot easier to deal with than freezing rain for sure.
Check out the link on the right to some awesome ice storm photos and some explainer graphics on different types of winter precipitation.
Answered by KSL Meteorologist Dina Freedman.
