Date of Award:


Document Type:


Degree Name:

Master of Natural Resources (MNR)


Civil and Environmental Engineering


Joel E. Fletcher


Data on monthly precipitation for three areas of Southern Utah--Beaver, Cedar City and Ephraim--and three areas of Northern Utah--Salt Lake City, Ogden and Logan--where a series of measuring stations were arranged as traverses from the valleys to the mountain tops; were assembled and analyzed.

The relationships between elevation and precipitation amounts were shown. The Southern Utah stations were drier at the same elevations than the Northern Utah stations and the differences became greater as the elevations increased. There was a close correlation between the high elevation and low elevation stations in the same traverse even with the above divergence.

A higher percentage of the annual precipitation fell during the winter months at the Northern Utah stations than at the Southern Utah stations. These differences were also greater at the high elevations.

There appears to be an elevation of maximum precipitation between 9000 and 10,000 feet. The annual precipitation decreases both above and below these elevations.

A higher percentage of the years in Southern Utah are near the mean showing more uniformity than the stations in Northern Utah. These difference in not reflected in the numbers of consecutive dry years except when the consecutive years extend beyond 8 wherein the Northern Utah stations have had as many as 14 consecutive years of subnormal precipitation. The Northern Utah stations show the same trend in consecutive wet years, with the Logan record showing as many as 14 consecutive years with above normal precipitation.

The Beaver precipitation record shoed a continually decreasing 5-year mean, while Salt Lake City and Logan records showed the opposite trend.