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[pct-l] Re: snow at bishop pass

At 10:26 PM 6/3/98 -0700, Dave Gomberg wrote:
>
>Well, it's not field data, it's from the net, but Bishop Pass has still 44"
>of snow.  That's an awful lot for such a low elevation.
>

Actually http://monsoon.water.ca.gov/cgi-bin/selectNow.TR?bsh
says that there is about 44 inches of WATER CONTENT of snow at 
the Biship Pass snow pillow at 11,200ft. The actual snow depth/water content
ratio is highly variable, but the snow survey folks say in late season it
is about 2/1
so 44" water content works out to be about 88" snow.

What is really scary is that
http://cdec.water.ca.gov/snow/current/snow/pillowplots/Kings.html shows the
last month for all the pillows in the Kings river basin.

Except for the one low pillow at Big Meadows (7,600') , THERE HAS BEEN NO
SNOWMELT this season. In 1995 while I was preparing for my through hike I
watched these pillows closely. By mid May 95 there was significant melt
showing. I planned my departure to cross Forester Pass two weeks after the
snow would be gone at Upper Tyndall Creek (11,500') 
http://monsoon.water.ca.gov/cgi-bin/selectNow.TR?uty
The high temp there today was 32F, so there would have been NO MELT TODAY,
though it got up to 45F yesterday...

It looks to me like this year will be MUCH more snow covered than 95, and
that year there was still snow on the high passes in August......
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