Snow, glorious snow!
2012 is shaping up to be a great winter for skiers, sledders, snow shovel salesmen and ... salmon! With more water stored in our hills during the winter, more water will be in-stream this next summer allowing better fish passage in smaller creeks and cooler water temperatures. And as we compare the sizes of our snow drifts with neighbors, we get the sense that we have more white stuff than usual for this time of year. But is that true? And if so, by how much?
Well, the folks at the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) collect and summarize data all year long to answer just these types of questions. NRCS installs, operates, and maintains an extensive, automated system to collect snowpack and related climatic data in the Western United States called SNOTEL (for SNOwpack TELemetry). In Alaska we have 63 SNOTEL sites with 23 in the Cook Inlet watershed. Click here for a map of SNOTEL sites in Alaska.
These are high elevation locations and often quite remote which is why they are set up to transmit data using ‘meteor burst communications technology’. This is as neat as it sounds! They use VHF radio signals which are reflected at a steep angle off of the ever present band of ionized meteorites existing from about 50-75 miles above the earth. So they don’t use satellites, but meteors!
NRCS collects standard information at each site including snow water equivalent (amount of water contained in the snowpack), precipitation and air temperature. The snow water equivalent (SWE) is a common snowpack measurement and we can use it to answer the question: Do we have more snow than normal this year? And the answer is – yes! In fact, on the southern Kenai Peninsula we are at 177% of average SWE; in the Anchorage bowl we’ve got 130% of average SWE and in the Susitna Basin, we’re at 121% of average SWE. For site specific information click here.
So when the next blizzard strikes and you find yourself shoveling the path yet again, let the thought of salmon thriving next summer keep your spirits high!
