For some time, there has been a forecast that The Great Salt Lake, once one of the largest inland salt lakes in the world. New data confirms the likelihood of the disaster.

If the lake does disappear, it causes real problems. According to NPR, “The big unknown is how bad dust storms could get from a dried up lake bed. There is precedent. Along California’s Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains, years of water diversions from the Owens River by the city of Los Angeles caused downstream saline Owens Lake to dry up. Dust storms from that lake bed became the largest single source of dust pollution in the nation.”