Snow Survey Celebrates Century of Service

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact information:
Ron Francis,  (801) 524-4557
Randy Julander, (801) 524-5213

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Snow Survey Program, which water forecasters and managers have come to rely on, is celebrating 100 years of service to residents of the West.  Governor Jon M. Huntsman, Jr. has declared the week of April 24th as Snow Survey Centennial Week in Utah, highlighting the need for accurate snowpack data to manage the state’s water resources so vital to the citizens and visitors of our state.

The study of snow resources began in 1906 when Dr. James E. Church volunteered to climb
Mount Rose each month to measure the effect of temperature change on snow melt and runoff into Lake Tahoe. That pioneering effort began the science of deep snow measurement and water supply forecasting that led to 1935 federal legislation expanding the snow survey and water supply forecasting program to all Western States.

Today, the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) installs, operates and maintains an extensive, automated system designed to collect snowpack and related climatic data in the Western United States and Alaska. This system, called SNOTEL (for SNOwpack TELemetry), operates over 660 remote sites in mountain snowpack zones. In Utah, there are 88 remote SNOTEL sites reporting hourly data and 39 snow courses, where site visits and measurements are made three times per year. Often, sites are accessed by helicopter or snowmobile.

The type of data collected includes snow/water equivalent, snow depth, precipitation from rain and snow, air temperature, and soil moisture and temperature. The data are updated hourly on the Utah Snow Survey Web site at http://www.ut.nrcs.usda.gov/snow/index.html.

Since water is the lifeblood of the West, snow survey data prove helpful to a number of customers, including researchers, river and reservoir managers, municipal water supply manager, emergency managers, power generation managers, recreation facility managers, fire control managers, and farmers and ranchers who rely on a consistent supply of irrigation water.

The Utah NRCS maintains a snow survey office near the airport in Salt Lake City. The five employees, including hydrologists and electronic technicians, serve all of Utah, most of Nevada and part of Idaho and California. The Snow Survey Manager in Utah is Randy Julander, who can be reached at (801) 524-5213 x12.

The first snow survey in Utah was conducted by Salt Lake City in 1912, followed by the college of agricultural engineering in the 1920’s, before being handled by NRCS (formerly Soil Conservation Service) in the 1930’s.

NOTE to Editor: Historic and current snow survey photos (12) are available at the following ftp site: ftp://ftp-fc.sc.egov.usda.gov/UT/snow/New Folder. A background paper with more historical information is also available as a pdf at this same ftp site.

Please feel free to contact Snow Survey Manager Randy Julander for an interview regarding this story (801-524-5213 x12).

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