Montana Snowpack just below historical 30 year average but still looking good (2/19/2009)

The SNOW WATER EQUIVALENT represents the depth of water in the snowpack, if the snowpack were melted, expressed in inches. The YEAR-TO-DATE PRECIPITATION Percent of Average represents the total precipitation (beginning on October 1st) found at selected SNOTEL sites in or near the basin compared to the average value for those sites on this day. Reference period for average conditions is 1971-2000. Source: www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov

Montanan's that lived here through the 2000 fires tend to start thinking about snow pack this time of year. Low snow pack has tended to coincided with higher levels of forest fires come summer, not to mention drought for our agriculture industry.

This year shows the snowpack at 89% of historical 30 year averages, and the total year to date precipitation at 96%. See the chart to the right for a graphical representation of snowpack and precipitation levels for the last 23 years.

The data was pulled from the Natural Resource Conservation Services' web site, where they provide access to a vast amount of statistical data, including SNOTEL data, short for SNOwpack TELemetry. This automated system tracks precipitation, snow depth, and air temperature every 15 minutes, 365 days a year, at over 730 sites in the western U.S.

The system was congressionally mandated in the mid-1930's to measure snowpack in the mountains of the west and to forecast the water supply. Originally the system employed people to check the snowpack levels at regular intervals. In 1980, the system was updated with the automated system used today.

This automated system is really a technological marvel. Because of the remoteness of the areas where the data is being collected (the tops of mountains, with lots of snow), the engineers who devised the system had to develop a way too transmit information across vast distances. The result was a system that transmits its data by sending radio waves into space, where they bounce off of ionized meteorites and rain down information to two earth based listening posts.

Thanks to this wonderful tool we can now predict how much water we will have in our lakes, rivers and streams this year. To some degree, it also lets us know what type of fire season we will have: the more water in our waterways, the less forest fires in our wildlands.

Though no expert on the subject, it seems to me that the snowpack levels are high enough to get us through the summer without too many forest fires.

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