Editor’s note • The following is an excerpt from the Salt Lake Tribune’s new Open Lands newsletter, a twice-a-month newsletter about Utah’s land, water and air from the environment team. For a sneak peek at what we’re working on and news we’re following, sign up to have Open Lands delivered to your inbox.
Statewide, Utah’s snowpack is looking quite good. Not 2023 levels of good — that’s a snowpack we’ll likely never see again in our lifetimes.
But across the board, the amount of water currently stored in our mountains in the form of snow is above normal. Statewide, it’s 124% of median. And we still have a few weeks to go until our snowpack typically hits its peak.
Here are some charts illustrating how things look.
Utah's snowpack is above average, but not near last year's records. (usda.gov)
All of Utah is above average. (usda.gov)
[Subscribe to the Open Lands newsletter]
You’re probably used to seeing these graphs by now. The first shows how Utah’s snowpack compares to prior years, along with the average, low and max snowpacks we’ve seen over the last few decades. I also included 2023, the aquamarine-colored line, so you can see just how bonkers that water year was.
The map shows the amount of snow water equivalent in watersheds across Utah compared to the 30-year average.
100 years of tracking snow
The folks who make these charts, the Utah Snow Survey, are marking their 100-year anniversary tracking snowpack in the state. I got to join them Friday for a little celebration at the first snow course ever established in Utah, right near the trailhead for Tony Grove in Logan Canyon.
It’s kind of amazing to think about the amount of work it took to monitor Utah’s snow a century ago. Snow Survey staff, who technically work for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, dug up old documents and field logs to share with reporters.
How the snow survey used to get things done. (U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service)
A logbook showing snow totals from 1924 to 1947. (U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service)
All those years back, snow surveyors traveled to some pretty remote places in Utah solely by foot. They stashed army blankets at the stations in case they had to hunker down. The journey to the Tony Grove snow course was probably at least a 10-mile hike in. Through the snow!
These days, data like snow depth, snow water equivalent and soil moisture get beamed directly to the Snow Survey’s office thanks to satellites and telemetry. NRCS workers do still visit every site to validate the automated information and ensure everything’s working like it should, but they usually take snowmobiles to make the trip easier.
When they validate our snow water equivalent data, they use the exact same technology the first Utah snow supervisor, George Clyde, invented when USDA created its first snow courses back in 1924. It’s basically a long, hollow pipe snow surveyors drive into the snow. Its specific size and diameter means every ounce of snow collected in the sampler equals one inch of water when it melts. So they weigh it using a simple scale.
Taking a snow pack measurement. (Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune)
“It was really, really clever that he did that,” said Jordan Clayton, the current supervisor of the Utah Snow Survey.
The Snow Survey has provided an invaluable tool for Utahns. Water managers monitor its data to forecast runoff and how much they should keep or release in reservoirs. Cities and counties use it to plan for possible flooding. Skiers and snowboards follow it to track the season. Farmers watch it to figure out how much might be available for the irrigation season.
Follow @@LeiaLarsen