Montana State University Students Visit Lick Creek SNOTEL Site
In the fall of 2023, a professor and her 15 students got an up-close tour of the Lick Creek SNOTEL Site, to learn how the water supply forecast is predicted.
In the western United States, snow melt is relied on to fill streams and reservoirs for municipal, recreational, agricultural, and other uses through the year. It is estimated that upward of 80% of our water supply originates from the mountain snowpack. It is vital to know how much snow is in the mountains to be able to forecast water levels for usage during the spring and summer.
It is the primary task of the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Montana Snow Survey Program to collect snowpack data and use that information to forecast water supply. The team does this by visiting snow courses to manually measure snow water equivalent or inches of water contained within the snowpack and snow depth and using snow sampling equipment. The team also utilizes the Snow Telemetry (SNOTEL) network to automatically collect precipitation and snow water equivalent, which can then be used to forecast seasonal streamflow volume.
In the fall of 2023, NRCS Hydrologists Eric Larson and Joe Kral, took 15 students and their professor to the Lick Creek SNOTEL site. The group was from the Mountain Geography class at Montana State University.
The purpose of this trip was to educate the students on how the SNOTEL team measures and tracks precipitation and the snowpack to forecast water supply for the spring and summer.
The class is an upper-level class, so the Lick Creek SNOTEL site was chosen to give the students a view of tools gathering data at this site. Some of the tools here include two snow pillows that weigh the snowpack, acoustic sensor that sends a beam down to measure the depth of the snow, a precipitation gauge to measure the total precipitation and Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) to transmit the data in real time.
The snow survey team usually gives several SNOTEL sites tours a year to students, on top of going to classrooms to give presentations.
“The tours are important because it gives students an opportunity to learn about the snow survey program, the importance of the mountain snowpack, and also to see how SNOTEL sites operate.” said Larson.
To learn more, visit the snow survey page.