Snow news roundup: what I've been reading and watching
Snow news roundup: what I've been reading and watching
Spanning the American West to bring you the latest snow stories and visuals
The humans behind snow data
Orbiting satellites, planes beaming lasers, and automated monitoring stations all gather critical data about the snowpack, so it can be easy to forget that manual measurements taken by human beings are still crucial for tracking snow and ground-truthing the technology.
Two recent feature stories discuss a pair of legendary figures who have advanced our understanding of snow thanks to their work in the field.
More than a century ago, James Edward Church, Jr., a classics professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, invented a tool for calculating snow’s water content that’s still used today. Kaleb Roedel of KUNR explained how Church developed the Mt. Rose snow sampler, a metal tube that’s thrust into the snowpack and weighed to calculate snow water equivalent, a key measure for water managers.
Adrian Harpold, a professor in environmental science at the University of Nevada, Reno, told Roedel that “the value of that small piece of metal that he invented is probably literally billions of dollars over the last 100 years.”
Church taught subjects such as Greek, German, literature, and art history, but he was enamored with mountain climbing and is now considered the “father of snow science,” according to this piece from the university, which notes that “since Church first made the snow sampler, over 300,000 snow course measurements have been done throughout the West.”
❄️ A Nevada professor’s invention has steered Western water supply for more than 100 years. Kaleb Roedel, KUNR, 3/8/24.
Billy Barr, a hermetic “citizen scientist” in Gothic, Colorado, who has measured local snowfall for five decades was recently profiled by Brittany Peterson of the Associated Press. Be sure to check out both the story and video.
“Barr is modest about his own contributions, although the once-handwritten snow data published on his website has informed numerous scientific papers and helped calibrate aerial snow sensing tools,” Peterson writes. “His faithful measurements revealed something he never expected long ago: snow is arriving later and disappearing earlier as the world warms.”
Now 73, Barr recently had both hips replaced, but he expressed optimism about continuing the volunteer work.
“Being socially inept made me so I could do it for 50 years, but anyone can sit there and watch something like that,” he told Peterson.
❄️ Citizen scientist measured Rockies snowfall for 50 years. Two new hips help him keep going. Brittany Peterson, Associated Press, 4/3/24.
❄️ Barr has also been profiled by The Denver Post, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic.
Monitoring the melting
This winter, I posted lots of maps and graphics showing snow accumulating, but I’m sorry to say that it’s now time to share some visuals of the snowpack diminishing.
The April 18 map below depicts the melting of the snowpack over the prior 24 hours in a portion of the Rockies (the Four Corners are toward the bottom of the image). The white areas show little to no snowmelt at the highest elevations of Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico, plus much of Wyoming. But the magenta, red, and orange indicate plenty of melting at lower elevations.
If you’d like to see where there’s still snow on the ground, the Snow Viewer from the National Snow and Ice Data Center is a helpful tool. In the graphic below, the map on the left shows satellite measurements of snow cover in the West while the chart on the right plots how current conditions compare to the 2001-2023 period.
The blue line in the chart shows that snow cover for the West as a whole was about average (the dashed line) on April 17. The Snow Viewer also lets you drill down to individual states and watersheds to see how much of the landscape is still covered in snow.
Post-mortems on the snowpack season
Good luck concocting a unifying narrative to describe this year’s Western snowpack (other than “location is everything”). Depending on where you look, conditions ranged from awful to awesome, with plenty of places right around average.
In the Pacific Northwest, the meager snowpack led Washington’s Department of Ecology to declare a statewide drought emergency, and the snow drought could impact fish, farms, hydropower, and drinking water supplies, according to a story by Conrad Swanson of The Seattle Times.
Farther north, the Canadian Press reports that British Columbia suffered the lowest snowpack on record, raising concerns about irrigation restrictions and the coming wildfire season.
On the bright side, Utah’s Alta ski area recorded back-to-back seasons with more than 600 inches of snowfall for the first time in 15 years, according to a story by Ian Greenwood at Powder Magazine.
In Wyoming, Greenwood reports that the season at Jackson Hole “was shaping up to be a total dud” but then it “did a complete 180 during early 2024, leaving local skiers with powder whiplash.”
❄️ WA declares statewide drought emergency following poor snowpack. Conrad Swanson, The Seattle Times, 4/16/24.
❄️ B.C. has lowest snowpack on record, drought a concern: BC River Forecast Centre. Canadian Press, 4/10/24.
❄️ Alta Celebrates First Back To Back 600+ Inch Seasons In 15 Years, Ian Greenwood, Powder Magazine, 4/8/24.
❄️ Jackson Hole Mountain Resort Remembers "One Of The Oddest" Ski Seasons Ever. Ian Greenwood, Powder Magazine, 4/16/24.
Runoff forecast
The map below shows the runoff forecast and illustrates the uneven conditions across the West’s many river basins.
Although the snowpack in southern Colorado and northern New Mexico was near or above average this season, the runoff projections for the San Juan River and portions of the Rio Grande range from 71% to 80% of normal.
As I noted in my previous post, recent disparities between snowpack measurements in April and subsequent streamflows are concerning for water managers and an active area of research.
On the beleaguered Colorado River, the latest forecast for inflows to Lake Powell, the nation’s second-largest reservoir, is 85% of normal, according to an April 16 update from NOAA’s Colorado Basin River Forecast Center. The January 1 forecast was 66%, so the outlook has improved thanks to the snowpack finally catching up, but it certainly won’t be a banner year for runoff in the basin.
My own private snowpack, on the shaded north side of my house, is fading fast. With ski season ending and wildfire season looming, I’ve shifted focus from making turns to raking pine needles.
Satellite views of the Sierra snowpack
After a sluggish start, the Sierra Nevada snowpack wound up close to average this season, which was unusual given the recent feast-or-famine pattern. NASA’s Earth Observatory published a set of satellite images showing what the Sierra snowpack looked like over the past four years around the start of April.
“The last time the snowpack was close to normal on April 1 was 2010, when it was 104 percent,” according to the story by NASA’s Emily Cassidy. “By comparison, it was 232 percent of normal on April 1, 2023. The year before, it was just 35 percent of normal.”
The Earth Observatory, which has kept tabs on the Sierra snowpack for many years, offers a sequence of satellite images starting in 2006 on this page. Below is an animation showing some dramatic variations in the snowpack from year to year.
Avalanches in Colorado
Some recent news stories about Colorado avalanches caught my eye. Thankfully, none of these tales end with death or serious injury.
Stina Sieg of Colorado Public Radio reports that one of the state’s avalanche forecasters had to be rescued from an April 8 snow slide near the Eisenhower-Johnson Memorial Tunnel, which allows I-70 to bore through the Continental Divide. The slide was about 130 feet wide and around four feet thick at its deepest, but the forecaster was only partially buried.
“After he became lodged against a tree, buried up to his waist, he was able to slowly wiggle his arms free and reach his satellite communication device,” Sieg writes. “By the time he sent out his SOS, however, his coworkers were already en route. Because he’d missed a scheduled check-in time, the agency already knew something was wrong. It took five hours, but eventually, they dug him out with the help of a search-and-rescue team.”
The worker only suffered minor injuries and hypothermia. It’s the first time in the 51-year history of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center that the agency had to rescue one of its own employees from an avalanche.
❄️ A Colorado avalanche forecaster had to be rescued this week — from an avalanche. Stina Sieg, Colorado Public Radio, 4/11/24.
In March, Jason Blevins of The Colorado Sun looked into an interesting technology: the dozens of remotely triggered avalanche exploders that are designed to reduce the threat of unexpected slides burying highways around the state. Colorado employs a variety of remote systems and plans to phase out the U.S. Army howitzers dating from World War II that fire shells to start avalanches in a controlled fashion.
The video below from the Colorado Department of Transportation shows the Gazex system, which uses compressed gases to create a concussive blast and is installed on Berthoud and Loveland passes (trigger warning: the thing explodes at 2:10 in the video).
❄️ Remote-controlled avalanche exploders have been on Berthoud Pass since 2015. Are they working? Jason Blevins, The Colorado Sun, 3/8/24.
Finally, in my neck of the woods, Reuben Schafir of The Durango Herald wrote about students who are working toward a Snow and Avalanche Studies Certificate at Fort Lewis College. The new program has seven required courses, and the first cohort of students is on track to earn the certificate next year.
“Few schools have a program specializing in the science of avalanches, designed to produce graduates with the formal academic training for a career in ski patrol, guiding or avalanche forecasting,” Schafir writes.
❄️ Sliding toward a snow and avalanche studies certificate. Reuben M. Schafir, The Durango Herald, 4/14/24.
