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I am working on a school project and was wondering why does it snow more in the mountains than in the valleys?
Thank You,
Cody R.
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There's a few basics to this one and a lot more that you could go into great detail about, so we will point you in the right direction.
First we need to remember in the atmosphere, it gets colder the higher up you (unless you have something funky going on like an inversion). So a lot of the times when we're getting rain in the winter or late fall in the valleys, it's cold enough for that precipitation to be snow in the mountains. That's one reason for more snow.
The other reason and we've talked about it a bit before is what's call orographic lift. As air moves over the mountain it is forced to rise. As air rises, it cools and condenses and clouds and precipitation forms. This makes for additional snowfall in our mountains.
You can learn more about how lift works with some links on the right. Orographic lift is one of the reasons why we get so much snow in Utah with Alta receiving around 500 inches on average.
Answered by KSL Meteorologist Dina Freedman.
