Title: Utah Center for Climate and Weather: Climate of Utah
Headings: NWS Description of Utah's Climate
Saturday, February 7, 2015
Climate of Utah
NWS Description of Utah's Climate
Prehistoric Climate of Utah
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Content: The dust bowl days of the 1930's in the Great Plains area of the United States were a gentle picnic in comparison to this ancient “dry spell.” Sand swirled for centuries until it was piled in dunes thousand of feet high. Later, the mountains were pushed up to heights well above Utah's present mountain peaks. Eventually, another sea covered the area and endured for as long as a hundred million years. When the sea eventually disappeared, the windblown sand was revealed as the multicolored hills and rock outcroppings seen today in Utah's famous National Parks of Arches, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands and Zion. During the early Cenozoic Era (about 65 million years ago) another drastic climatic change took place which had a marked influence on Utah and the Central Intermountain Region. Temperatures gradually increased, with a peak occurring about 50 million years ago. This peak was then followed by a significant drop in temperatures and an increase in precipitation. As recently as 100,000 years ago glaciers became abundant in the high mountains and northern regions of North America. This epoch is often called the “ice age.”