Historical NWAC Snowdepth Data & Plots ONLINE

Hey folks, I just completed a project today that I've been planning for quite some time. Hopefully it will be interesting and useful to many Northwest skiers.<br><br>I now have the complete archive of NWAC semimonthly snowdepth data back to 1926-27 available online, along with a custom plotting program to graph the data and display it in a table. This is the data for 11 sites in WA and northern OR shown in the CLISNO reports (does not include any hourly telemetry data). In the end, it only took a couple of days to write the plotting program, and it was actually fun. It's still under development, please let me know of any problems or bugs (it's only been tested on three different Max OS X web browsers, works great on Safari, but slower/clunkier on MSIE and Netscape; don't know about Windoze browsers). See:<br> www.skimountaineer.com/CascadeSki/CascadeSnowNWAC.php <br><br> <br><br>Thanks to Garth Ferber for providing the complete NWAC historical data set.<br><br>Amar Andalkar<br> www.skimountaineer.com <br>

If you do get the chance, I think the ability to compare different seasons at the same site would be quite interesting. Expecially for people like me that can't remember the skiing one year from the next.

<br><br>Done!<br><br>I implemented that capability early this morning. The plotting program now has two separate modes of operation, "Single Season, Multiple Sites" or "Single Site, Multiple Seasons" showing up to 12 seasons at once including averages, maxima, and/or minima. The program seems to have reached a stable stage of development, and no major additions are currently planned (unless someone thinks of a really great feature to add).<br>

I second Larry's wows. The "Single Site, Multiple Seasons" function is a great addition. I have been wondering how our current bad season compares to some of the legendary bad seasons of the past, so I ran off a plot for Baker comparing this year to 76-77 and 80-81, which I seem to remember were bad years. Amar, I hope it is OK to use the output this way (and hopefully I won't get in trouble with TAY admin for a second photo):<br><br> <br><br>So I'm wondering if history gives us some reason to be optimistic about the rest of the current season? In both of those past bad seasons, there appears to have been quite a lot of late season snow. This pattern was apparent at several other of the sites I looked at, although the lower elevation sites didn't show such dramatic gains. So despite the upcoming 4-5 bland days, maybe there is still some hope for this season?

Sure, Charles, it's OK to use the graphs in any non-commercial way. I've added a copyright/usage notice to that webpage now, just in case the Seattle Times comes knocking again looking for snowdepth plots. I've also updated the NWAC data file to add numerous missing values and fix a few scattered erroneous values, which the plotting program helped to identify. I decided to add Crater Lake to the list of sites since it has excellent long-term data, perhaps NWAC might do the same with their CLISNO reports (since Crater Lake is within their extended service area for special avy forecasts). I've also created a new page yesterday which plots combined monthly snowfall and snowdepth over the whole year, but only at 2 sites (Paradise & Crater Lake) since it's hard to find other sites with reasonably complete records. See: www.skimountaineer.com/CascadeSki/ParadiseCraterLakeSnow.php <br><br>As to whether the current season can be saved. . . It certainly appears that most previous seasons in the WA Cascades which were this bad in February have had improved snowfall and depth during March/April (like 1976-77 and 1980-81). But I don't see that as a near-certainty, since there have been other poor seasons which were doing slightly better than 2005 as of Feb 1, but then had very poor Feb-June. See 1933-34 and 1940-41, Paradise's two record low snowfall years with only 317" and 313" of snowfall (about 45% of normal). These were the only years that the Paradise snowpack has vanished by June 1, the average depth is about 10 ft on that date and the snowpack typically melts away by mid-July. <br><br>I'm still hopeful for a good late-winter and spring this year, but I have to admit that there is a decreasing factual basis for those hopes. The current 30-day and 90-day outlooks are not promising. One small consolation: the 4 big Pineapple Express storms thus far this season have left a decent snowpack above 8000-9000 ft on the volcanoes, snow coverage certainly looks closer to normal to me up there (which it should be since precip has been over 80% of normal this season). So I'll still be happy on the volcanoes come spring, and hopefully others will seek the goods up high where they can be found. Unless there happens to be an abnormally warm/dry spring and summer (which is not much more likely this year than any other), I think people's ski streaks are unlikely to be jeopardized.<br>