Precipitation‐surveys for anticipating water‐supplies

Salt Lake City depends chiefly for its water-supply on the flow of five mountain-streams, all heading high in the Wasatch Mountains within 25 miles of the heart of the City. These streams are in turn chiefly dependent on the amount of precipitation of rain and snow over the drainage-area lying between elevations of 6000 and 9000 feet. An outstanding characteristic of the discharge of these streams is the relatively low stages in the late summer and through the winter; and more especially the comparatively excessive flood-discharge in the late spring and early summer months, usually for only a few weeks in May and June; this is when the mountain-snow is melting most rapidly, or is in fact, just leaving the major mountain-basins.