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Show Meteorologist Discusses Utah Rain Statistics , "Utah la, and always must be, an : arid state," J. Cecil Alter, United States weather bureau meteorologist, meteorolo-gist, said In a discussion before delegates and visitors to. the Utah ! State Agriultural college extension service conference and philosophy school held last week In Logan. "Not only Is this state remote from the Pacific coast, but mountains j along the west coast Intercept and j take a heavy toll fran the moisture : bearing winds which sweep from the ocean." j Ocean surfaces, however, do not supply a majority of the moisture ' which falls in the form of rain on -inland areas, Mr. Alter explained. ( His figures disclosed that a major ; part of all current rain water has ; been evaporated from land surfac- ! es. There is too close a correlation j between rain and original soil fertility, fer-tility, the country over, to be disre-t-anded, Mr. Alter pointed out. The theory that rains regularly Increase soil fertility is probably not altogether alto-gether true, however, Mr. Alter said In discussing a suggestion that the rains, bearing nitrogen and pollen, may have trie effect of fertilizer upon the soils. The whims of Utah's weather are unpredictable, Mr. Alter claims. "Utah is dependent on a 12-inch average rainfall, but our weather Isn't always dependable!" he asserted. as-serted. "The average precipitation has climbed as high as 18 inches and dropped as low as eight inches per year." In 1919, Mr. Alter discloses, Sco-field, Sco-field, Utah had 64 inches of rainfall, rain-fall, and on November 27 of that same year Montlcello got 4V Inches Inch-es in 24 hours. In 1922, one Utah town had 55 inches of rain and melted snow and another community, commun-ity, only one hundred miles away, received only one inch all year. About 54 million acre feet of moisture a year falls in Utah. Of that amount, the Colorado river takes about two million feet and irrigators use another two million. The rest goes up in vapor, the me-teorolgist me-teorolgist pointed out. V Man has only one assurance, Mr. Alter states. That is that it will never altogether cease to rain. "We can dedicate our effort to iimi-pounding iimi-pounding more, conserving . more, and wasting less water, secure in the knowledge that the rain will never pour itself out," he insists. |