But the stations still can’t be moved to higher elevations, where wind can whip snow around exposed mountaintops and make it hard to measure, Wetlaufer said. In coming years, the federal agency plans to expand the number of sites that include sensors for solar radiation, wind and soil moisture. Meanwhile, SNOTEL sites are also undergoing upgrades that could result in more accurate modeling, said Karl Wetlaufer, who helps run the program. The agency also paid for a segment of the headwaters snow mapping flight so it could cross-check its measurements. Those results could take a couple of months to process since they’re still in the testing phase, said Suzanne Paschke, who is managing the project for USGS. The agency installed its own remote sensing stations above and below the typical elevation of SNOTEL sites and its laser-equipped drones measured the surrounding area. Geological Survey is on the ground researching an option that could be more affordable, even if it’s not as precise. On the same day the plane scans the river’s headwaters, the U.S. Others are working on ways to improve snow measurements too. The technology also doesn’t account for variables such as air temperature and late-season storms that can affect water supplies. Paul Miller, a hydrologist at the Colorado Basin River Forecast Center, said “removing uncertainty in one of the data points” can be critical in a water-stressed region.īut Miller noted the limitations of even aerial snow mapping, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars or more per flight and only provide measurements for the day flown. But the hope is to expand the work along the stressed river, which 40 million people rely on, said Jeffrey Deems, co-founder of the company. The flight by Airborne Snow Observatories in mid-April measured the area around the headwaters of the Colorado River.
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But as climate change causes rising temperatures, snow at those sites - at around 9,000 feet above sea level - is melting earlier than normal and pushing water managers to look for other ways to finetune forecasting methods.Īmong the options is a method of aerial snow mapping, which gives precise snow measurements across an entire basin. states have been measuring snow through hundreds of remote sensing sites known as SNOTEL stations, which are operated by the federal Natural Resources Conservation Service.
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The method, developed nearly a decade ago at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, “is the gold standard of snow measurement,” said Emily Carbone of the Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District, one of Colorado’s largest water providers and the primary funder for the flight.įor decades, Western U.S. Under the plane is a device that uses lasers, cameras and sensors to map snow and help drought-prone communities improve forecasts of how much water will later fill reservoirs. (AP) - At a tiny airport surrounded by mountains, a three-person crew takes off for the inaugural flight above the headwaters of the Colorado River to measure the region’s snow by air.