Monitoring the Upper Snake Snowpack: Updates from the Field
Hello! My name is Otto Lang, and I am a postdoctoral researcher with Boise State University and the Henry’s Fork Foundation. I’m working alongside Rob Van Kirk at the HFF, Lejo Flores, Professor in Geosciences at Boise State University, and Sarah Newcomb at Trout Unlimited. Together, we are in the midst of a two-year WaterSMART project funded by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to improve predictions of snow water supply across the Upper Snake River watershed above Menan, Idaho. In this blog post, I’ll share the motivation behind this project, my snow observations from trips into the field in February and March, as well as some closing thoughts on the story of this season’s snowpack and my plans for the summer ahead. Snow Water Supply Water supply is the amount of water available in a given water year (October – September). Adequate water supply supports healthy fisheries in the Upper Snake (Like the Henry’s Fork), and is crucial for sustaining downstream agriculture on the Snake River Plain. In this region, and much of the West, the majority of our water supply comes from precipitation during the winter, and most of that precipitation is typically snow. Snow accumulates into a snowpack