Benches

We recently moved to Eagle Mountain City Center, I was wondering when watching the weather are we considered a bench or a valley so we can know when we have a chance of snow...

Thank You,

Kandi M.

We're new to the southern Utah county area (Spanish Fork) and in your forcasts, you often mention the bench areas getting snow before the valley. What elevation would you use to desribe the benches? Bruce and Hilary F.

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For those who are new to the area, we have lots of little names for things. These unique names are mentioned a lot of you are watching the weather at KSL and if you're just in town visiting or if you've moved here and are waiting for more of our awesome snow this winter, you might be a little lost.

An example of this would be that Wasatch Back is a different place than the Wasatch Front. The former refers to the Park City area and the second choice is the Salt Lake area.

When you look at our landscape you'll see a few things that stick out right away. The Great Salt Lake and then you'll see different levels on the hills around it. When Lake Bonneville used to cover this area, it sank slowly and left behind some markings or terraces on the land. These are called benches. You can see these if you look around.

In SLC our elevation is about 4266 feet (at the airport) so benches are higher. Around 4400 to 4600 feet would be the first levels of benches, higher benches are around 5000 feet. In our forecasts it's useful to know the elevation where you live since snow levels can be different during the season. The freezing level might be at 5,000 feet so the higher benches get snow and the city gets rain.

Check out the link on the right, it has cool info on Lake Bonneville.

Answered by KSL Meteorologists Dina Freedman and Len Randolph.