About Us

The Center for Snow & Avalanche Studies and our Senator Beck Study Basin serve the mountain science community and regional resource managers by hosting and conducting interdisciplinary research and sustaining integrative 24/7/365 monitoring that captures weather, snowpack, radiation, soils, plant communities and hydrologic signals of regional climate trends. Senator Beck Basin is also the home of the Colorado Dust-on-Snow Program. The slide show above illustrates some of the research teams we’ve hosted, and we invite additional researchers to utilize Senator Beck Basin facilities and data. For more, see the CSAS Fact Sheet.

Are you interested in learning more about Dust-on-Snow? Visit our Colorado Dust-on-Snow Program website: www.codos.org

Please see our storm reports page where we document the meteorological conditions under which a storm occurred as well as describe how the storm unfolded. If you would like to be included on our Storm Reports E-mail list, please contact Jeff Derry at jderry@snowstudies.org

News

Water Year 2026

• Join us in Silverton for “Snow School for Water Professionals” this February 25-27, 2026. The class is perfect for anyone wanting to learn more about the role of snow and our mountain environments as it pertains to water resources, designed to enhance understanding of snowpack processes, monitoring and data.
• Check out the near-real time images from our climate stations in Senator Beck Study Basin. Now you can watch the snow accumulate/melt and dust-on-snow appear/disappear visually and not just by looking at our weather station data.
• The first month of the water year kicked things off with a bang, with southwestern Colorado experiencing one of the largest rainstorms to ever hit the region. Some stream gauges, like the San Juan River at Pagosa, saw a streamflow peak eight times what the snowmelt peak provided in early June.

Water Year 2025

• Through our ongoing collaboration with Colorado State University (CSU), we finally published our paper titled  Twin Peaks Streamflow Timing: Can We Use Forest and Alpine Snow Melt-out Response to Estimate? Anybody involved with snowmelt/streamflow forecasting in Colorado will likely find it very interesting. See the summary of the research on YouTube.
• The Water Desk published an article about our assessment of a cosmic ray neutron sensor to measure SWE. This is a three year project we are doing with our Colorado State University partners.
• Our USGS colleagues have been very prolific, in addition to the recently published paper about microplastics in our snowpack,  they just published another journal article titled Light Absorbing Particles Deposited to Snow Cover Across the Upper Colorado River Basin, Colorado, 2013-2016: Interannual Variations From Multiple Natural and Anthropogenic Sources.  CSAS and the Colorado Dust-on-Snow Program provided the samples used in the analysis for both of these publications.
• CSAS is starting a new research collaboration with Colorado State University testing the feasibility of using a cosmic ray neutron sensor to measure SWE. Read all about it in the Colorado Dust-on-Snow January 24, 2025 Update.
• The dust-on-snow symposium Nexus of Land and Water-Southwest Initiative on Land Health and Water Resources was an insightful gathering in Cortez October 30, 2024. A wide variety of presentations all centered around the issue of dust-on-snow. There is more to come out of this effort, stand by.
• We would like to welcome CSAS’ new employee, Ella Bump. Ella started full-time in November but she has worked for CSAS part-time in winter with CODOS and data management activities for the last three years.
• The dust-on-snow samples we collect as part of the Colorado Dust-on-Snow Program statewide since 2004, unbeknownst to us until recently, is also a rich microplastics dataset. Our USGS collaborators did the analyses and wrote about the results. Read the recent article using that data: Microplastic and Associated Black Particles From Road-Tire Wear: Implications for Radiative Effects Across the Cryosphere and in the Atmosphere

Water Year 2024

• January 21, 2024:  After a dry start to the season, winter has finally gained traction!  Four storms have occurred so far in January, and the snow keeps coming.  See our Current Conditions page here, and check our the WY 2024 Storm Reports here.
• October 1, 2023: Starting in 2004 we, with the Forest Service and Natural Heritage Foundation, conducted detailed plant surveys in our Senator Beck Study Basin. Field work ended from the last survey in 2022. The thesis report was completed by Caitlin Harvey with Western Colorado University. It summarizes changes in the Basin since 2004. Read her thesis here.

Water Year 2023

• September 29, 2023: Another loss to the mountain and snow community, Jerry W. Roberts was many things including part of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (INSTAAR) San Juan Avalanche Project in 1977. Read the thoughtful remembrance from the “The Land Desk”.
• September 10, 2023: We posted the season summary for WY2023 at codos.org. Check it out
• August 25, 2023: Richard Armstrong recently passed. The cryosphere community lost an incredible pioneering scientist. The earth lost an extraordinary human. Read about Richard’s rich life here.
• June 8, 2023:  5.8″ of SWE remains at the Swamp Angel Study Plot.  Read the update here.
• May 18, 2023:  Jeff Derry featured in an article by the Colorado Sun: Colorado’s above-average snowpack has an enemy: Out-of-state dust
• A big snow year, and on April 3 it turned into a big dust year, read our updates at codos.org
• Join February 7, 2023 for “Snow Research Meets Operations in the San Juans: Current State and Future Collaborations”  A workshop put on by Center for Snow & Avalanche Studies and Colorado State University
• The snow season is off to a respectable start. See our storm reports here.
• November 17, 2023: Join us in Silverton for “Snow School for Water Professionals” this February 8-10, 2023.
• Hello winter! Finally! Stay informed about dust-on-snow, weather, forecast, and an array of interesting news related to snow, water, and management in Colorado at our Colorado Dust-in-Snow Program website

Water Year 2022

• See our report summarizing WY2022 at codos.org
• The Colorado Sun wrote a nice piece about the microplastics we have found in snow samples across the Colorado high mountains.
• After a lot of work we finally announced our most recent findings of the microplastics in the Colorado Mountain snowpack.  See the Durango Weekly’s coverage here.
• May 20, 2022: We already seen peak flows in the region.  See the media coverage of this dust-on-snow season: Aspen Journalism, Steamboat Pilot and Today, The Durango Herald, Gunnison Country Times.
• May 18, 2022: If you want to learn more about the Colorado River troubles but also want a laugh, check out this John Oliver segment (explicate language).
• May 15, 2022: A record windy spring.  Severe dust conditions across the state.  See codos.org for details.
• March 20, 2022: It is turning out to be a big dust year so far, and the big dust months are still ahead.
• February 24, 2022:  A four day storm just delivered 3″ precip and 28″ accumulation.  And a big dust event ushered in the storm.
• January 22, 2022: The second in a series workshop “Exploring the Ability to Fix a Broken Water Cycle” will be held February 4, 2022, please join us.
• January 7, 2022: Had a great time teaching the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs (UCCS) snow field class this week!
• December 3, 2021: Join the participatory workshop “Coming Together to Fix a Broken Water Cycle”.  Durango Herald discussed the workshop in a recent article.
• July 14, 2021: Read this very informative article National Geographic did about dust-on-snow and our CODOS Program
• Stay informed about dust-on-snow, weather, forecast, and an array of interesting news related to snow, water, and management in Colorado at our Colorado Dust-in-Snow Program website