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SALT LAKE CITY -- Looking at weather maps and radar images is nothing new for Joe Young. As a graduate student for the Atmospheric Sciences Department at the University of Utah, he's definitely seen heavy rain and more.
But viewing Saturday's storm from a specialized truck is something most Utahns never experience.
"This is an amazing experience to be able to just work with a piece of equipment like this that isn't usually deployed in a mountain environment," he said.
The vehicle is basically a Doppler radar on wheels. It's normally sent to the Midwest to study tornadoes. But thanks to a national science program, it's currently in Utah to study snow.
We know that it snows, but we don't know what the processes are in the clouds.
–Joe Young
"All this information about the droplets, about the clouds, we call it the microphysics of what's going on," Young said. "And this is all the information we've never really had before in the mountains."
Students pointed the vehicle's radar at Little Cottonwood canyon Saturday and were amazed at what they saw.
"We're getting to see things that really nobody gets to see," Young said.
Jim Steenburgh, a professor in the department, said, "What we're seeing right now which is really kind of cool is the snowfall enhancement over the mountains that are just to the south of Little Cottonwood Canyon, which is normally something we can't see in this kind of detail with the usual radar data that we get here."
We're having the times of our lives. We don't get to play with a toy like this very often.
–Jim Steenburgh
Knowing that specific type of weather information could one day lead to even better forecasts.
"We do a good job of knowing when a storm is coming in," Steenburgh said, "but pinpointing when and where the snow is going to fall is a challenge. We're hoping this data will help us understand those storms better and help us develop our computer models and improve them."
Those computer models ultimately lead to better snow forecasting.
Young said, "We know that it snows, but we don't know what the processes are in the clouds."
However, the more this machine is used, the more nature's mysteries get figured out.
"We're having the times of our lives," Steenburgh said. "We don't get to play with a toy like this very often."
E-mail: acabrero@ksl.com
