Hikers and camper liken the pinkish snow to flavored snow cones, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, or pink lemonade.
LOGAN, Utah — High up in the mountains, amid pinyon pine and quaking aspen trees, the remaining remnants of the winter’s snow is dotted with hues of pinks, purples and oranges.
From the roads that traverse mountain passes above Park City to the Bear River Range near the Utah-Idaho border, last winter’s record snowfall is heating up, baking under the sunlight and turning hues of red. The presence of so-called “watermelon snow” — referred to unofficially due to its pinkish tint — is piquing the curiosities of photo-seeking visitors and raising a host of questions about nature, health and climate.
Scott Hotaling, a Utah State University ecologist who studies biodiversity in cold and high altitude environments, likened the algae’s ability to produce a secondary pigment to humans, whose skin uses pigmentation to absorb ultraviolet radiation and protect from the sun.“They need some kind of pigmentation to prevent damage related to the high-UV of the environment they’re in. So they produce the secondary pigment largely for that purpose to protect themselves,” he said.
Though snow becoming water makes it available to nourish the algae, the exposure of bare ground changes how much light is reflected versus absorbed. Darker colors absorb more sunlight, turning snow banks and glaciers into liquid more quickly.
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