Photo: Andrew Schwartz
Did you know that California has a 'Snow Lab?'
We didn't!
It's located at Donner Pass in the Sierra Nevada. Built in 1946 by the U.S. Weather Bureau and Army Corps of Engineers and now managed by UC Berkeley, it's a research field station specializing in snow physics, snow hydrology, meteorology, climatology and instrument design. They keep records of precipitation, snowfall, snow depth and air temperature, and data on wind speed and direction, solar radiation, snow temperature, relative humidity and soil moisture...so they're quite the busy bees up there!
You all know by now that this year's California snowpack is the biggest we've seen in more than 70 years, and according to the LA Times, it's SO DEEP, that:
"...it currently contains roughly 30 million acre-feet of water — or more water than Lake Mead, the nation’s largest reservoir."
Now that's a good and a bad thing...we definitely got enough water and snowpack to help alleviate our extensive drought, but now the fear is switching to what happens when that snow ultimately melts. The resulting flooding will cause real problems for many areas across the state.
So we wanted to know more about all of it, not to mention what it is exactly the Snow Lab does, so we reached out to Andrew Schwartz, Ph.D., Lead Scientist and Manager at the Central Sierra Snow Laboratory to talk about it, check out that interview below!