[pct-l] Re: Snow questions

[e_lehman at theory.csail.mit.edu (Eric Lehman)]

Hi,

I'm sure you've looked at the excellent PCT post-holer site.  For another
perspective, you can look at my site:

    http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~e_lehman/uty.html

Essentially, I've taken this year's snow record up to today and pasted on
melt records from this day forward from 35 previous years.  I update daily
and the range of uncertainty-- while still large-- is slowly dropping.
Of course, something completely unprecedented *could* happen; the graph
only shows you the range of things that *have* happened.

At the extremes, a once-in-a-decade fast melt could leave us only slightly
above normal snow levels.  On the other hand, the melt patterns in about
15% of years would put us FIVE WEEKS behind schdule.  Overall, it looks to
me like we'll be 1-3 weeks behind normal.  So this suggests that June 27th
is a reasonable date for a rough plan.

/Eric

P.S.  Someone suggested I compute a mean and std. dev. for the day when
all snow is gone.  I liked this idea a lot, but got stuck because we
haven't had to melt off this much snow most years.  So a lot of the curves
don't drop all the way to zero.  I couldn't think of a good way to cope
with that, so I've just left the graph for "eyeballing".

> Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 11:51:14 -0400
> From: medusaj@aol.com
> Subject: [pct-l] Snow questions
>
> So.  In planning an itinerary to leave with our support person, snow
> becomes a factor.  If my calculations are correct, actual "Ray Day" is
> not June 15 this year, but June 27 (June 1 + [90.1/3.5]). [...]
>
> My questions are: [...]
>
> 2.  How realistic are Ray's calculations?  Would you recommend we use
> the June 27 date as our estimated Kennedy Meadows departure date?  Or
> June 15?  July 15?  August 31?