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Hi,
What is the relationship between altitude and weather along the Wasatch Front? In the winter and night time, it seems that the coldest temperatures can be found in the lowest elevations. Yet the snow level is often defined as being above a certain elevation and this definitely matches experiences as the upper elevations of the mountains retain their snow longer then lower elevations.
Is it correct to say cold air typically retreats to the lowest elevations, leaving a small band of warm air along the benches. Above a certain elevation (perhaps 5200 feet) the effects of rising elevation again make the air temperature colder. If this is true for low temperatures, how does this effect high temperatures?
Thanks for your help! Eric R.
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Eric, I hate to burst your bubble but at night the coldest temperatures can be easily found at high elevations OR lower ones. But on a typical day,generally, colder temperatures are found the higher up you go.
Temperature generally decreases as you go up in the sky, it then increases again as it hits the tropopause (that's WAY higher than you need to be worried about though). When the temperature increases instead, it's called a temperature inversion. This is problematic and with warmer air aloft, pollution can get trapped in valleys, this is what happens in the winter and it's not fun.
Cold air DOES sink and at night as the air becomes even colder it does move to lower elevations. But think about the atmosphere for a second here, if you have cold air all the time thousands of feet above our heads and cold air sinks, then why aren't we freezing all the time? As the sun warms us up, the air here is rising here close to the surface. These are balancing eachother out. Also there's more water vapor at the lower levels, so that is helping that strong warmer and rising motion at the surface too.
OK, there's A LOT of things to think about when you talk about rising and sinking air and air parcels. At night, when the air is cooling off, it does sink! But remember, when you bring a parcel of air down off say an elevation of 11,000 feet it doesn't retain the same temperature. As the air sinks, it also compresses and warms! So by the time it gets to the lower level, it's a warmer temperature than it was before. We call this adiabatic warming. This basically means, that it isn't as cold right at that lowest elevation as it is at the highest one all the time.
As far as high temperatures go, the highest temperatures on a typical day (cold air as you go up in elevation) can be found at the surface of the earth. More water vapor, higher pressures and also more surface area too, so the sun is heating up more stuff like grass and land. This helps to warm the air above.
Other things factor into the high temperatures too, snow cover for instance. Also if you have a temperature inversion you can sometimes find higher temperatures at higher elevations.
Snow levels just really depend on where it's going to be freezing enough to have snow. Yes, you can have snow when the air temperature at your house is slightly above freezing since the air where the snow was made was 0C or 32F or below and the snow flakes are falling, they might get a big melted on the way down.
Hopefully this will help you. The atmosphere is a complicated place and there are lots of different kinds of scenarios in it.
Answered by KSL Meteorologists Dina Freedman and Len Randolph.
