"Clay, Dale" wrote:
>
> Did we ever decide whether the salt is damp early or late?
Dale, from my experience, it depends.
If there has been no rain in the previous 24 hours
and the water table at 0600 is 1 to 1 1/2 inches
then it will be dry in the morning and damp/wet in the afternoon.
The water expands (like in a radiator) as it warms so what happens
depends on where you start at in the morning. Less than 1 inch
will be moist by 10-12 and wet to sloppy by 1600. More than 2 inches
will be dry all day. It's rare but possible for it to be too dry and
the salt starts getting loose and powdery. Rain changes everything.
In 1985 I was told by Multy Aldrich, who had been there every year
starting in 1949, that 1985 was better than he had ever seen. I can't
describe how smooth the salt was. The biggest "pressure ridges" I
saw would disappear when you drove over them.
Maybe if we got another El Nino that flooded the salt for
two years like 1982 & 83 ........
Bryan
My 1985 theory:
In the 1890's a BYU hydrology class took a field trip across the
salt flats. Notes from that trip mention salt thickness up to 8 or 9
feet. There were (and I think still are) alternating layers of salt
and silt (mud).
My guess is that there was enough water in the 82-83 period to dissolve
all of the first salt layer and some of the next layer of salt below the
mud. Then these two dissolved layers were deposited in the one layer
we saw in 1985.
Just a guess. (All my higher education's been on airliners)
///
/// land-speed@autox.team.net mailing list
/// To unsubscribe send a plain text message to majordomo@autox.team.net
/// with nothing in it but
///
/// unsubscribe land-speed
///
///
|