[pct-l] snow pack between Tuolumne Meadows and Lake Tahoe

[jeffmoorehead1 at cox.net (Jeff Moorehead)]

  Your responses shed some light on how these predictions are made-- namely, what criteria is employed for declaring that the high Sierra is passable? I realize that criteria for one hiker might be very different from another, depending upon equipment, experience, or in general how freaked out people get about snow. I suppose that forecasting the 'zero snow' day is the one sure way to claim that snow was not the problem for anyone incapable of passing. I suppose you could take Steve's approach and forecast for a 12" day, a 6" day etc. along with some sort of semi-educated statement about what this holds in store for the hiker. However, aside from the potshots taken at Greg Hummel, there is no way to really test or grade the prediction.

  Interesting-- and thanks for the web sites. Being a stats professor, I am going to play around with these numbers similar to what Steve and Greg are doing. Ideally, if you knew the April 1st average snow depth, then you could make a much more refined forecast for the zero day. Instead of an estimate using all years of highly varying snowfall, choose those years that had identical snowpack, and refine the estimates using only those data (Steve is doing this with <,> qualifiers). You need lots of data for this. The web site that dude recommended has data for snow stations that goes way back (I was able to query to 1930 for the Cottonwood Pass snow station). Greg, I'll contact you for your data to see if this is possible...  

  One more question and then I swear that's it. What PCT passes are the critical ones in this regard? 

  Thanks all.
   Jeff


  I track the historical snowpack data for several high elevation snow survey sites in the Southern Sierra in order to make a highly speculative, semi-educational prediction of when the most likely, earliest date that a well prepared thru-hiker might enter the Sierra and be able to pass through.   This is based upon the light relationship between the amount of snow on about March 1st versus the date at which these survey sites show zero snow.  

  Contact me off list and I can send you my data in an MS Excel file for your own analysis, or simply wait until around March 1st when I post my annual prediction to the list and Tom Reynolds and others sit back and take pot shots at me.

  Best regards,

  Greg Hummel

  In a message dated 12/16/2004 2:11:21 PM Pacific Standard Time, jeffmoorehead1@cox.net writes:
    Before this original thread dies, did anyone ever locate that table of
    snowpack vs time vs location vs years for the high Sierra? I would be really
    interested in seeing that data or anything similar that is out there on the
    net...If not, politiely ignore this...
    Jeff