Let’s begin with winter (formerly known as ski season). Northern Utah, once the proud monarch of wintertime swagger, now finds itself staring at the sky like a jilted lover waiting for a text that never comes. Snow, once our reliable seasonal celebrity and frozen economic engine, has apparently decided it’s had enough of us. The Wasatch Mountains now spend much of the winter looking like they’re waiting for someone to finish frosting them.

For generations, Utahns have boasted about “The Greatest Snow on Earth,” a slogan that once felt like a humblebrag and now reads like a cruel joke printed on a T�’shirt at a thrift store. Our license plates may need an update to “Greatest Dust on Earth.”

Ski resorts, understandably panicked, have begun to innovate. They proudly announce and then delay “early openings,” which increasingly consist of strips of machine-made snow surrounded by acres of exposed dirt. Visitors are encouraged to “embrace the adventure,” which is marketing code for “watch out for rocks.” Meanwhile, the Winter Olympics are coming, and wait, is it too late to switch to the Summer Olympics?

But if the lack of snow feels bleak, the Great Salt Lake is here to remind us that things can always get worse. Once a shimmering inland sea, the lake has receded so dramatically that cartographers have started using pencil instead of ink as they update receding shorelines. The exposed lakebed, rich in heavy metals and the kind of ingredients you’d expect to find in a villain’s cauldron, now serves as the source of dust storms that sweep across the Wasatch Front like a toxic snow globe.

And then there are the winter inversions, northern Utah’s annual reminder that fossil fuels actually are polluting our air (don’t tell the legislature). These inversions trap cold air, and everything we’ve ever emitted, right overhead, creating a thick, gray atmospheric soup that tastes faintly of exhaust and regret. On these days, Utahns choose an N95 mask or to stay indoors.

Utahns have become experts at identifying air quality levels by visibility alone. If you can see the mountains, it’s a good day. If you can see downtown, it’s a decent day. If you can’t see your neighbors, it’s a bad day, but at least you don’t have to look at the holiday decorations still up in their front yard.

Naturally, the state legislature has sprung into action. Not to solve the problems, of course, but to brainstorm increasingly creative ways to avoid solving them, or often, to make them worse. They have formed committees and subsubcommittees. They have commissioned studies, reports, and glossy pamphlets. They have held hearings, workshops, and listening sessions. They have passed resolutions expressing “deep concern.” And they’ve prayed and fasted.

To be fair, our representatives have spent a lot of taxpayer money, more than $1billion actually, on everything except the one thing that would definitely help: letting a lot more water reach the lake.

Instead, lawmakers have proposed a dazzling array of alternatives like a pipeline to the Pacific Ocean, cloud seeding, a wetland destroying inland port, a fossil fuel railroad, water guzzling AI data centers, more coal burning, regressive water pricing, additional freeway lanes and water diversions, and endless development.

But satire aside, the situation is no laughing matter. The Great Salt Lake is not just a scenic backdrop; it is a critical ecosystem, a climate regulator, and a linchpin of northern Utah’s economy and ecology. Its decline threatens public health, wildlife, and the region’s longterm stability. The dust storms are not quirky weather events; they are hazardous. The lack of snow is not an inconvenience; it is a warning. And the inversions are not a seasonal annoyance; they are a symptom of deeper environmental strain.

Northern Utah stands at a crossroads. One path leads toward meaningful action: water conservation, tough policy changes, and a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths. The other path leads toward more committees, more studies, and more creative avoidance.

For now, the state seems content to choose the latter. But the lake is falling, the snow is vanishing, the forests are burning, and the air is thickening. Nature is sending a message, and it’s getting harder to ignore.

Even for the legislature.

Eric C. Ewert is a professor in and chair of Weber State University’s Department of Geography, Environment & Sustainability. His current research and teaching interests lie in environmental studies, the American West, population, historical and economic geography and geospatial technologies. Views are the opinion of the author, and in no way represent Weber State University.