Trego's Mountain Ear

It’s the week before Christmas. Fifty years ago, I was on a Ski-doo Alpine, making the January Run. It was a partial run – mostly for the purpose of rewinding the clockwork recorders that measured the height of the antifreeze solution as deeper snows compressed the snow pillows (a snow pillow is a rubber bladder, filled with antifreeze – I measured a lot of them, but rarely saw one).

It’s a different world now – instead of pushing twin tracked snowmobiles up Grave Creek to sample Weasel Divide, then sample Stahl Peak and rewind the pillow, I can download the measurements from my armchair. Today, the only need for snow surveyors is to visit the site, and provide the measurements that allow the correlations with the (longer established) snow course. The real iron men of snow surveys were the generation before me – they did it all on skis and snowshoes.

So, in memory of the job that once brought me envy (“You really get paid to ride snowmobiles?”) Here’s what the data recorder has to say about Stahl Peak today:

I like the chart – and the long-term data (for the last 30 years – it really does make me feel old to see that my measurements from 50 years ago, are so far in the past that they’re not included. But even a half century ago, I had learned that climate, like weather, changes – it’s just slower to change).

6 Hour SWE Change (inches)	12 Hour SWE Change (inches)	24 Hour SWE Change (inches)	48 Hour SWE Change (inches)	1 Week SWE Change (inches)
0.00	0.00	0.50	1.20	2.40
Daily Statistics Latest Observation is 20.90 inches which is 147 % of average  Note: The Median/Average is based upon the 30 year period 1991 to 2020. The Min/Max is based upon the Period Of Record (POR).

So, at this time, the snowpack on Stahl is about 150% o the average. If you click on the NCRS site, you’ll see where the Kootenai basin sits:

Basin   Site Name	Elev (ft)	Snow Water Equivalent			Water Year-to-Date Precipitation
		Current (in)	Median (in)	Pct of Median	Current (in)	Median (in)	Pct of Median
KOOTENAI RIVER BASIN
Banfield Mountain	5580	6.8	6.2	110	19.5	10.3	189
Bear Mountain	5460	16.8	18.8	89	47.4	31.8	149
Garver Creek	4250	3.3	4.7	70	15.2	9.0(24)	169
Grave Creek	4350	3.0	5.2	58	28.8	14.3	201
Hand Creek	5030	3.6	3.9	92	11.6	7.2	161
Hawkins Lake	6460	14.3	9.8	146	25.8	15.2	170
Poorman Creek	5050	8.8	11.4(22)	77	46.1	25.9(22)	178
Stahl Peak	6040	20.9	14.2	147	27.1	18.2	149
Basin Index (%)		104			168

The percentages are impressive – but there is a lot of winter yet to come. I don’t have data based on the Bouyoucos blocks we once measured to show how much moisture is stored in the soil at the sites – but I’d bet the soil moisture is at 100% capacity too.

It’s a pleasant thing that the data is so readily available anymore.