Measuring Snow
Posted: Tue 26 Oct 2010 9:11 am
We are rapidly approaching the time when my rain guage turns into a block of ice for about 4 or 5 months, and it's a lot more interesting to measure snow fall. So, any ideas on how to do that?
I've toyed with the idea of something like a traditional rain guage - I can come up with a way to measure how high the snow is inside, but it would need to be emptied every day. And of course snow blows around, unlike rain that tends to stay in the same place once it's down... And it packs, melts and otherwise changes volume over time!
Maybe I should just go for total depth on the ground on an hourly basis, and let the value go up and down over the season. It would then be easy to calculate not only snow falls, but also the melt rate when spring comes.
Thoughts? Comments?
I've toyed with the idea of something like a traditional rain guage - I can come up with a way to measure how high the snow is inside, but it would need to be emptied every day. And of course snow blows around, unlike rain that tends to stay in the same place once it's down... And it packs, melts and otherwise changes volume over time!
Maybe I should just go for total depth on the ground on an hourly basis, and let the value go up and down over the season. It would then be easy to calculate not only snow falls, but also the melt rate when spring comes.
Thoughts? Comments?