Snow survey in the cold rain is one of the hardest conditions in which to do fieldwork. Today Mr. Kobayashi and I sampled two locations close to the river at elevations of about 50m above sea-level. As expected and as always, the larch site had a significantly greater snowpack than the cedar site due to much less snow interception in the canopy.
Snow survey result
Depth: larch 70cm / cedar 50cm
Density: larch 0.37 / cedar 0.31
SWE: larch 25.9cm / cedar 15.7cm
Depth and density were higher at the larch site, giving a snow water equivalent (SWE) of about 26cm compared to only 16cm at the cedar site. These values are well below average for late February, reflecting the late start to the snowpack accumulation, which began around 11 January.
Photos: T. Kobayashi
