Great Salt Lake

salty water · Utah · huge lakes · climate

Saltier than ocean. The Great Salt Lake is so salty that you can float in it like a bubble, just like the Dead Sea. The water is about four to five times saltier than regular ocean water.

Makes its own snow. When cold wind blows over the warm lake water in winter, it creates huge amounts of lake-effect snow around the area. Sometimes this snow piles up so high it closes roads and schools.

Ancient lake remnant. The Great Salt Lake is all that's left of a massive prehistoric lake called Lake Bonneville that covered much of Utah thousands of years ago. As the climate dried out, most of that ancient lake evaporated away.

Gigantic but shrinking. The Great Salt Lake is the biggest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere, but it gets smaller or bigger depending on how much water flows into it from rivers and how much rain falls. It's also about 75 miles long.

No way out. The Great Salt Lake is called a terminal lake, which means rivers flow into it but it has no outlet to the ocean. All the salt gets trapped there and keeps piling up over time.