Winter sports enthusiasts and weather hounds will get a chance to learn the “Secrets of the Greatest Snow on Earth” on Wednesday.Jim Steenburgh will give the free presentation at 5 p.m. at the Park City Museum Education and Collections Center located at 2079 Sidewinder Drive. Steenburgh, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Utah whose teaching and research interests cover mountain weather and climate, winter storms, weather analysis and forecasting, said the lecture comes directly from and shares the title of his 2014 book, which is now in its second edition. “I’m going to tell everybody what those secrets are,” he said with a laugh.Steenburgh, known as “Professor Powder,”  will talk not just about the snow conditions at Utah resorts, but also dive into atmospheric conditions and how they affect the snow.“The ideas for the book came out with conversations I had with non-meteorologists — people I would get on the chairlift with or people I met in the backcountry,” he said. “When they find out I’m a meteorologist, they start asking lots of questions. And the first question they always want to know the answer to is whether Utah’s snow really the ‘greatest on earth.’ And that’s chapter one.”Follow-up questions people usually ask cover where Steenburgh likes to ski, concerns about climate change and avalanches, he said.“So, the book really goes into what I call ‘secrets,’ but it’s really about everything you want to know about winter storms if you’re a skier,” he said.One of the more common topics is the difference between Utah resorts and others in the country, Steenburgh said.“In the western United States, one of the important aspects of our weather patterns is we have storms that come off the Pacific, but we have lots of north-to-south oriented mountain ranges,” he said. “The Cascades and Sierras get the full-force brunt of the storms coming off the Pacific, and those tend to be warmer because they’re coming off the ocean. They get a lot of snow, but the snow tends to be pretty heavy.”Moving toward Colorado, the climate gets colder, and the mountains rise to higher altitudes, according to Steenburgh.“Snowfall in general decreases as you move into the interior, but the snow quality tends to go up,” he said. “The central Wasatch is where the combination of quality and quantity come together. So, Alta and the area around Little Cottonwood and Big Cottonwood canyons and the Central Wasatch is pretty unusual in the Western interior because it’s so snowy.”Snow scientists refer to the area as a “transitional snow climate,” Steenburgh said.“By the time you get into Colorado, the snow could be lower density, but they don’t get a lot of snowfall, so, the frequency of deep-powder days is lower in general,” he said.Climate Change is another hot topic Steenburgh will address in the presentation.“I think the lack of snow or abundance of snow we see year-to-year is just randomness, and the reality is with or without climate change, we would still have variability in the amount of precipitation from year to year,” he said. “Where climate change has impacts, which is not really the issue this year, is that we’re seeing a great fraction of winter precipitation falling as rain instead of snow at lower elevations in Utah.”Also, making artificial snow, even though the process can cover a local mountainside with clouds, doesn’t make a significant impact on natural snowfall, Steenburgh said.“Artificial snow is an absolutely critical thing in the ski industry because it ensures that there will be a product during the holiday season, but for the most part, it’s pretty localized,” he said.Speaking of local impacts, Steenburgh will also talk about avalanches, especially the danger in the Cottonwood canyons, which is timely in light of a couple of last week’s fatalities earlier this week in the backcountry.“Little Cottonwood Canyon has always been a dangerous place, and avalanches would have been part of the prehistoric environment of the canyon,” he said. “If we go back to the Last Glacial Maximum, there would have been a very different climate, much colder, than today.”Last Glacial Maximum, also known as LCM, took place during the last ice age where the Earth’s ice sheets were at their largest, Steenburgh said.“If Mother Nature is left to her own devices, Little Cottonwood Canyon will always be a dangerous place because there are more avalanche paths that intersect the Little Cottonwood highway than Big Cottonwood Canyon or Millcreek Canyon for that matter,” he said. “So the Utah Department of Transportation and Alta and Snowbird ski areas try to use avalanche-mitigation techniques to minimize avalanche hazard and the potential loss of life and damage to buildings.”Lecture attendees will learn a little bit about avalanche mitigation, Steenburgh said.“People who have done avalanche control work have done studies,” he said. “They have this thing called the avalanche hazard index that tries to quantify how risky a highway is.”That index takes into account the frequency of avalanches and their severity, but also the vehicle traffic, according to Steenburgh.“In general the highway in Little Cottonwood Canyon has the highest avalanche index of any major road in the world,” he said. “For the most part, those of us who go skiing every day don’t think about avalanche hazard, but it’s something that the folks at UDOT think about 24/7 during the winter.”Steenburgh, who has lived in Utah for nearly 30 years, got interested in atmospheric sciences while growing up in upstate New York.“The weather at the time was unpredictable, and it still is,” he said. “So there is a lot of suffering there if you do a lot of outdoor sports like backpacking and skiing. And at some point, I thought if I became a meteorologist that it would somehow help me to minimize the pain and agony and optimize my powder skiing.”Steenburgh gives many “Secrets of the Greatest Snow On Earth” presentations in northern Utah every winter and looks forward to doing one in Park City.“We’re pretty lucky to live in Utah,” he said. “I’ve visited places where people just dread snowstorms. Here, everybody starts cheering. So it’s a great place to work on mountain snowstorms, and people are naturally curious about mountain meteorology.”‘Secrets of the Greatest Snow on Earth’ by Jim SteenburghWhen: 5 p.m., Wednesday, Jan. 8 Where: Park City Museum Education and Collections Center, 2079 Sidewinder Drive Cost: Free Web: parkcityhistory.org/eventsThe post Lecture reveals the ‘Secrets of the Greatest Snow on Earth’ appeared first on Park Record.