Scientists, water resource managers and winter recreationists take notice: a new tool, entitled Snow Today, is available to help snow lovers monitor conditions—from the local to regional scale. Snow Today provides near-real-time updates of snow conditions across the Northern Hemisphere as well as monthly analyses of the data, focusing on the Western United States. This is a joint venture of the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) and the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR).
Along with Mark Raleigh of NSIDC, I (Karl Rittger) at INSTAAR lead Snow Today, meant to serve an interdisciplinary audience—from skiers and snowmobilers to climate scientists to water resource managers and those simply interested in weather. It fills a much-needed gap in snow science communication by presenting an ongoing narrative on snow conditions that ties together data, analysis and context. Each year, the Snow Today team will release a monthly analysis from January to May or June, depending on conditions, with the first post available today.
Updated daily, but also with a new article "Spring into rapid snowmelt" posted May 14!
Snow Today:
Previous articles:
April, a retrospective on March "Maximum SWE reached in some areas but not others":
https://nsidc.org/snow-today?page=1
March, a retrospective on February "Snow cover on the downhill":
https://nsidc.org/snow-today?page=2
February, a retrospective on January "A dry January, except in the Northwest":
https://nsidc.org/snow-today?page=3
Cheers,
--
Karl Rittger
Research Associate
Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research
University of Colorado, Boulder
4001 Discovery Dr
Boulder, CO 80303 USA
Office: (303) 735-3433
Cell: (303) 579-5118
