Snow

Municipal engineers released a new online resource on Thursday meant for commercial building owners to identify if their building in the Anchorage area contains a roof type that has been blamed for numerous snow-induced collapses. The resource comes as the municipality says the snow load on buildings is approaching 90% of the 40 pounds per ...

You don’t always need a laser—sometimes a camera will do. Researchers at the WSL Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research (SLF) have now disproved the paradigm that the height of snowpack can only be accurately determined from the air using laser scanners, says Yves Bühler, Head of the SLF’s Alpine Remote Sensing research group. “We ...

You probably didn’t notice a twin-engine prop plane loaded with high-tech equipment circling 23,000 feet over the San Joaquin Valley’s upper watersheds this fall. But it was there, gathering information about those watersheds in their “snow off” condition. That detailed information will be vital to multiple follow up flights of Airborne Snow Observatories, Inc. (ASO) ...

Using older models and newer methods, Hu and the team of scientists conclude that ants and photons are extremely alike in the realm of snow-depth research. This helped the principle come to fruition that light bouncing around in snow would produce gaugable and viable results. ICESat-2 (Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite-2) now reads light ...