BenedictGomez
Well-known member
I thought I'd share this as some may find it useful. NWS has a relatively new product at limited stations whereby you can view snowfall as a time series. What this means is you can see exactly how much it really snowed without relying on the ski resort's potentially.... suspect information, or even just delayed info given most ski resorts only update snowfall information once daily, and early in the morning. With this tech you can see how much it snowed at say.... 10pm before you go to bed, and where, and for the areas with multiple functioning weather stations with this tech you can perhaps see how much snow's fallen at the base or mid-mountain or the summit rather than relying on one nebulous figure stated by the resort.
So how does this work? Basically a sensor emits an ultrasonic pulse & then measures the time between sending the signal & receiving the return of the ultrasonic pulse. Various stations have different snow reporting intervals for this, but you just add up the data. The tough part of putting this together was finding the stations which have this new technology, because most dont. For instance, Powder Mountain has 3 weather stations, but only 1 with this ability, but I had to check them all to confirm. When I did locate a functioning station, I'd use latitude & longitude to "find" where they are on the mountain to figure out the actual location.
The below example is an Excel spreadsheet I created for the Wasatch, but if you like this idea of seeing for yourself how much it really snowed, or just dont want to wait for the moutain to report it at 7am, you can create your own spreadsheet for whatever state or region you want by finding the stations at:
1) Click, "Observations"
2) Click, "Surface Observations"
3) Zoom into wherever you wish to find a station. The + symbols on the maps are weather stations.
4) Click, "Historical Observations: 3 Day"
So how does this work? Basically a sensor emits an ultrasonic pulse & then measures the time between sending the signal & receiving the return of the ultrasonic pulse. Various stations have different snow reporting intervals for this, but you just add up the data. The tough part of putting this together was finding the stations which have this new technology, because most dont. For instance, Powder Mountain has 3 weather stations, but only 1 with this ability, but I had to check them all to confirm. When I did locate a functioning station, I'd use latitude & longitude to "find" where they are on the mountain to figure out the actual location.
The below example is an Excel spreadsheet I created for the Wasatch, but if you like this idea of seeing for yourself how much it really snowed, or just dont want to wait for the moutain to report it at 7am, you can create your own spreadsheet for whatever state or region you want by finding the stations at:
|
|
1) Click, "Observations"
2) Click, "Surface Observations"
3) Zoom into wherever you wish to find a station. The + symbols on the maps are weather stations.
4) Click, "Historical Observations: 3 Day"
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