The Center for Snow & Avalanche Studies serves the mountain science community and regional resource managers by hosting & conducting interdisciplinary research and conducting integrative 24/7/365 monitoring that captures weather, snowpack, radiation, soils, plant community and hydrologic signals of regional climate trends.
SUSTAINING SENATOR BECK BASIN
CSAS and our Senator Beck Basin mountain system monitoring study area provide important data and research to resource managers faced with year-to-year resource variability and the challenges of adapting to potential climate change. Our study area is funded by donations, researchers and a growing list of local, state and federal water and land management agencies. More ...
News:
- May 15, 2013: Snowmelt has really accelerated over the past couple of days. We're updating graphs for Senator Beck Basin snowpack, precipitation and streamflow daily through SAG (Snow All Gone).
- May 12, 2013: CODOS Update for Northern, Front Range, and Grand Mesa CODOS sites
- May 7, 2013: Dust-on-snow update from Senator Beck Basin
- May 5, 2013: Time lapse videos of a rapidly changing snow surface,
showing the formation and collapse of dust-induced snow penitentes
- April 24, 2013: Dust-on-snow update
- April 19, 2013: Denver Post article today: Good news of deep snow in Colorado foiled by dust that will speed melt by Jason Blevins.
- April 18, 2013: Storm #21 and the long D8 dust event finally over.
- April 16, 2013: 8th dust event of the season now in 36th hour and ongoing
- April 14, 2013: Nearly a foot of snow (storm #20) and an overnight dust event (#7)
- April 9, 2013: The 6th dust-on-snow event of the season blew in yesterday with a lot more dust than we've seen so far this season. The dust came with the beginning of Storm #19.
- April 3, 2013: First return to Senator Beck Study Plot in two months due to avalanche conditions. Today was very safe with new snow over solid, re-frozen crust.
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Andrew Temple at treeline. |
Andrew Temple approaching SBSP |
SBSP tower registering light, confused wind (upper wind monitor pointing south; lower pointing north). |
- March 21, 2013: Wrap up of Dust-on-Snow Events (#4 and #5) and our 18th Winter Storm for the season.
- March 12, 2013: Our Basin stream gauge has been dug out and is back online for the season.
- March 7, 2013: We've posted images of our hand-drawn strip charts from the past couple of water years. We find these an invaluable visual tool for comparing seasons.
- March 5, 2013: Landry got some nice shots from Swamp Angel Study Plot of the sun coming up and some tracks with feather prints. The bird was probably a ptarmigan given the track size, wing span, and willow browsing behavior.
- March 4, 2013: We received almost an inch of water with Storm #16.
- Feb 27, 2013: Storms 14 and 15 have come and gone, leaving "severe clear" skies in their wake for now.
- Feb 9, 2013: Dust came with the evening and overnight portion Storm #13. This is our 2nd dust layer for the season.
- Jan 31, 2013: Yet another storm (#12) brought us more water (14mm) and snow (7.5"). Despite these 3 storms in a row, we are 2" of SWE behind for the season compared to this time last year.
- Jan 30, 2013: Storm #11 started the evening of Jan 27th with colder temps and at least another foot of snow for us to shovel in Silverton. The storm effectively ended the morning of Jan 29th (Tues), with lingering intermittent very light snowfall continuing possibly into morning of Jan 31st (Thurs).
- Jan 27, 2013: It looks like our Storm #10 has ended, with new snow containing a much needed 31mm (1.2") of water at Swamp Angel Study Plot.
- Jan 18, 2013: Dr. Brandon Vogt brought a class from University of Colorado - Colorado Springs
to Silverton for the week. Chris Landry gave several lectures and led them on a trip to Swamp Angel Study Plot.
- Jan 12, 2013: Finally a storm to talk about! Storm #9 brought a record wind gust to SBSP (88mph) and snow depth at Swamp Angel reached more than 1 meter for the first time this season (at least for now).
- Dec 31, 2012: We've added graphs for visual comparison of precip and snowpack between years. We've also updated several of our other Senator Beck Basin data graphs. Happy New Year!
- Dec 25, 2012: The nicely timed low intensity Christmas Eve storm (#7) came through leaving a "severe clear" Christmas day in its wake. We await more snow tomorrow.
- Dec 21, 2012: Happy Winter Solstice! The Aeronet tracking sun photometer at Swamp Angel
measured an extremely clear day yesterday and perhaps again today. Hence, our incoming solar radiation measurements represent the maximum possible on these shortest days of the year. Put your sunscreen on!
- Dec 20, 2012: Clear skies today after 6 consecutive days with precip via 3 storm systems. They deposited a combined 1.7 inches of water and increased the depth of snow by 13 inches at Swamp Angel (before settling). Good news? No discernable dust deposition. See photo
- Dec 19, 2012: Winter Storm # 6 wrapped up late in the day with less precip than we had hoped for
- Dec 18, 2012: The very low intensity Winter Storm #5 has petered out, and Storm #6 is imminent
- Dec 14, 2012: Winter Storm #4, with snow depth at Swamp Angel finally exceeding 2 feet
- Dec 11, 2012: Winter Storm #3 brought another 14mm of water and a 14cm maximum increase in height of snow at Swamp Angel.
- Dec 9, 2012: Winter Storm #2 of the season came a full month after our 1st winter storm. This one yielded just 12mm of water at Swamp Angel, our threshold for calling it a "storm".
- Dec 8, 2012: AGU's Fall 2012 meeting included ten presentations/posters that utilized data from Senator Beck Basin
- Nov 20, 2012: We have a lot to be thankful for this year! Check out our Annual Letter to Friends of CSAS.
- Nov 10, 2012: We've logged our 1st winter storm of the season and the 1st dust event of the Water Year.
- Nov 8, 2012: Chris Landry presented "Snow system interannual variability
case study - WY 2011 and WY 2012" at the Upper Colorado River Basin Conference in Grand Junction.
- Nov 7, 2012: We've updated datasets from each of our 4 study plots, and made complete period-of-record .csv files available.
- Oct 25, 2012: Chris Landry writes about CSAS' Ten Years in Silverton in the Silverton Standard.
- More News
Contact Us:
Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies
1428 Greene Street, #103, PO Box 190
Silverton, CO 81433 USA
Phone: 970.387.5080; Fax: 970.387.5082
email: clandry@snowstudies.org
