About one month earlier Mr. Kobayashi and I had set up and cleaned the snow lysimeters. However, even by mid-January only trace snowpack had accumulated at the lower elevations of the Takiya River basin. In close to 20 years of field work at this site, this is the least snowpack ever recorded for mid-January. Precipitation levels have been normal to high, but it has fallen almost entirely as rainfall rather than snowfall due to warmer than average temperatures. We had to repeat our work of cleaning the lysimeter drains as snowfall just began to accumulate on the ground that morning. Photos by Mr. Kobayashi.
