Depth of Snow

Right now there is 2 to 3 feet of snow at the pass

According to the meteorologists at the airport we received just a 'trace' of snow in the last storm.  And so continues a string of clearly wrong weather measurements.  The last few years I've noticed that they always measure the snowfall on the low side, and often overall precipitation too.  In the old days they would measure the snow during the storm.  So even though it melted by the end of the storm it still counted.  I could use these measurements to guess how much snow fell on Pyramid and they helped me decide if I should go skiing or not.

It highlights that measuring some of the weather statistics is based on judgement.  It is not always consistent.  And this does create a real life problem.  We do need these sorts of statistics to monitor climate change.  Right now our airport statistics make it look like we are getting practically no snow year to year when I know that this is not true (except for 3 years ago when we really did get NO snow!). What happens if some government agency is deciding how much money Kodiak should get for snow removal and uses the airport statistics to decide?  We might get no money because it looks like we have no snow that needs removal.

Patrick