Upside-down snow storm.

It snowed for about 40 hours here in Salt Lake.  That’s unusual for us, but even more unusual was where the snow fell.

The weather people are calling it an “upside-down” snow storm.  Overall, the valleys got more snowfall than the mountain ski resorts.

I got 18” (46cm).    The benches in Bountiful got 34” (86cm) and the benches in Salt Lake got up around 2’ (61cm).

The ski resorts got less.  Snowbasin topped it off with 19” (48cm), the only one that got more snow than I did.  Snowbird got 17” (43cm), Brighton 13” (33cm) and Alta and Solitude a whopping 10” (25cm).

That’s very unusual.  We’ve had winters where the ski resorts get pummeled with snow, and the city sees mostly rain.  And frankly, I like it better that way.  Good for the tourism, much better for driving around the city.

Although, it has made me happy I bought the Wrangler.  Getting around has been slow, but not white knuckle driving like it would have been in the old Fords.

And, even with a foot and a half of snow, I been able to get in and out of my long, uphill driveway without having to shovel it at all.

Now, that’s good.

Through the eyes of a New Yorker.

Showed my visitor from New York around the city a little bit.  We went up into the Avenues and looked out over the whole city, went to the "This is the Place" Monument, drove up Emigration Canyon, down Parley's Canyon and then up to Snowbird Ski Resort.  First of all he was amazed at how clean everything was, the lack of trash all over the place.  He also commented on the lack of barriers preventing people from doing stupid things.  At the top of Emigration Canyon he said that you could just drive right off the edge, there was nothing to stop you.  I never thought about it, but even at the Dead Horse Point lookout, all you have keeping you from the abyss is a 2 or 3 foot stone wall.  Easy to climb over.  But, hey, if we fenced off anywhere that was dangerous in Utah, there'd be no chain-link fence left anywhere else.  He also, probably like most of the rest of the world, thought that the ski resorts had nothing going on when there was no snow.  He was surprised that they had the Alpine Slide, rope climbing, wire walking and even a zip line.  A really, really wimpy zip line compared to the one we rode in Puerto Vallarta.  Not unexpected.

Brigham Young et al.

This is a statue honoring the sea gulls that came and ate all the crickets and saved the pioneer's crops.  The irony was the bird poop in the guy's eye.

Brigham Young's farm house.

Not only was the zip line no more than a hundred feet above the ground the whole time, and only about 400 feet long, but you sat completely strapped into a seat.

Not much more dangerous, or thrilling, than riding a ski lift.

As opposed to the zip line in Puerto Vallarta: