WMOD00314

• Project Name: Uintah Ecology Project
• Title: Potential Ecological Impacts of Snowpack Augmentation in the Uintah Mountains, Utah
• Date: 4/20/1981
• State: UT
• Weather Modification - Doc Type: Report

INTRODUCTION

The Uinta Mountains are a major watershed giving rise to four of

Utah's major rivers: the Bear, Duchesne, Provo, and the Weber. About

1.8 Km3 (1.6 x 106 acre feet) of surface runoff water originate annually
on the range (Wasatch National Forest 1976 and Jeppson et al. 1968).
About 68% of that water feeds into the Green River, a major tributary of
the Colorado (Jeppson et al. 1968). The Uintas are thus a ,major source
..~~
of water for the Upper Colorado Drainage Basin as well as for the Great
Basin portion of Utah.
In 1978, the Soil Conservation Service (SCS) maintained 48 precipi-
tation storage gages in the Uinta Mountains (Whaley and Lytton 1979a).
Forty-four of those gages provide total annual precipitation data for
the period 1973-78. Twenty-seven of the 44 stations were read on April
1, July 1 and October 1 during the period 1973-78. This combination of
stations forms the basis for the following discussion of annual preci-
pitation and the seasonal components thereof in the Uinta Moutains.
In addition to the foregoing precipitation gages, the SCS also
maintains 47 snow courses in the Uintas in cooperation with the U.S.
Forest Service and the Utah Division of Water Resources (Whaley and
Lytton 1979b). Thirty-seven of those courses were read annually on
April 1 for the period 1973-79. We here summarize characteristics of
the April 1 snowpack of the Uintas for the 1973-79 period based upon
those 37 courses.

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