![]() Scientists, industries that mine the salt for minerals, and car enthusiasts are trying to figure out what’s behind the larger decline of the salt flats, which have been shrinking steadily for decades. And a little over two miles is nothing to a car racing along at 300 miles per hour. This year, heavy rains and mudslides left all but 2.25 miles of the racecourse unusable. When the water evaporates in the summer, it leaves behind mud overlaid with a thick crust of salt, strong enough to support a car. Every year during the winter groundwater turns the flats into a very shallow lake. The problem is, the flat, white racing surface is ephemeral. The extremely flat and smooth landscape is a magnet to racers, who can race their cars at insane speeds ( hundreds of miles an hour in some cases) without worrying about the typical rules of the road. ![]() The salt flats have played host to land-speed races and records for over 100 years but this is the second year in a row that the races have been cancelled. In a perfect world, this would have been the fourth day of the annual Bonneville Speed Week at the Bonneville Salt Flats. ![]()
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