Snow Surveys

I do not like being cold.  I do not like snow.  I am therefore not a big fan of winter.

The last few years the Sierra have had terrible snow packs, almost non-existent.  Winters have been mild.  Somehow I knew if I took this job, there would be more snow than had been seen in a long time just so I would have to deal with it.  The Sierra saw above average snowfall this winter.

California, eh-hem, you're welcome!

Our apartment is low enough that we didn't have snow, but my office was high enough to get plenty on a few occasions.  A friend from my summer at Carlsbad Caverns got a job in the same office as me and started the first of the year.  She stayed in my apartment for the first six weeks of the year until she was able to find her own place.  I took advantage of her growing up in Wisconsin snow savvy-ness and her 4-wheel drive vehicle to get me to work for quite a while (and when someone kindly totaled Gil's truck for him and he was using my car to get to school).  

The picture below was a particularly heavy snow fall day.  The power ended up going out at the office and we were sent home early anyway.

 The State of California likes to monitor the snow pack to know how to regulate water flow out of flumes and dams in an effort to conserve water and prevent flooding.  One of my tasks this winter was to go to the highest elevation points in our district and measure the depth and water content of the snow.  These numbers are then reported to the state water board.

This is my coworker Nancy after shoving the pole into the snow.  The goal is to push this massive hollow metal pipe all the way down to the soil.  With layers of ice in the 11ft snow pack... yeah right, but we did the best we could.

 We would snow shoe in to our survey transects, walk the transect and sample the snow about every 50 feet.  I took a turn at shoving the pole in a few times but mainly I was recorder and quality control.  The pole was weighed empty, then shoved (hopefully) to the dirt.  The height of the snow was recorded (there were inches marked on the outside of the pole), then the pole was removed with the snow core still inside.  The height of the snow within to tube was recorded, then the whole thing weighed to get the water content.  Then the really fun part of the whole process began, trying to get the snow core out of the pole so you could take your next survey.  

All this was done on unwieldy snowshoes and on less than solid snow surfaces.  It was an all day task and I always came home worn out.  Our office was responsible for completing four of these surveys and I helped out with two of them.

Getting the pole in.  Notice how bundled I am compared to Nancy.

 Measuring the height of snow.

It was an interesting experience.  Our office has snow survey records going back to the 1940s which is pretty neat to look through.