Receding lake greatly affects Wasatch Front

With steadily receding water levels and ever-expanding shorelines, Utah's Great Salt Lake may not seem so "great" these days — or is it?

The lake is less than half the size it was just 16 years ago. Select satellite photos from the past four decades, one of the most dramatic ways to see changes in the lake's size and shape, show whole bays are disappearing as the lake slims down.

The Great Salt Lake definitely has its ups and downs — and just where it is headed is difficult to say.

"My crystal ball's broken," says Wallace Gwynn, a geologist with the Utah Geological Survey. "If we get a good, wet winter, the lake would level off, though."

Because of Utah's lengthy drought — winding up its fifth year — the lake now has at least six fewer true islands: Thanks to expanding mud flats, Antelope, Stansbury, Carrington, Dolphin, Badger and Hat islands are all connected to the mainland. Fremont and Gunnison are the lake's only two remaining islands.

Still, as small as the lake is today, it remains Utah's largest body of water — and as a result continues to have a profound effect on much of the Wasatch Front in more ways than is commonly realized. From weather to birds to recreation to mineral extraction to transportation, the Great Salt Lake continues to affect daily life in northern Utah in both dry times and wet.

Consider:

• The current surface elevation of the lake on its south shore is 4,195.9 feet above sea level, only 4 1/2 feet higher than 1963's historic low of 4,191.3 feet. It hasn't been this low since 1971.

• By contrast, it is more than 15 feet lower than the peak years of 1986-87, when the lake level rose to 4,211.6 feet. During "the flood years" of the 1980s, rising water threatened to swamp key railroad routes, I-80 and other roads, prompting emergency efforts that included installation of expensive west desert lake pumps to send some of the overflow west.

• Great Salt Lake shorelines can change rapidly because it is quite shallow. Its surface area was only 950 square miles in 1963; by 1987 the waters had spread out over 3,300 square miles. Today it has dwindled to 1,200 square miles.

Guessing game

On Antelope Island, a state park, visitors to the beaches now find they have to walk three city blocks to get to the water's edge. Portions of the lake's key marinas, on Antelope and the south shore, are so shallow they are unusable.