Snow survey

Mid-winter snow conditions at Takiya River today. Recent snowfalls have left large amounts of snow held in the forest canopy, but today temperatures reached 1-2 degrees Celsius, and so the snow in the canopy was melting and sliding off. The river channel shows no signs of any recent high flows. Mid-winter baseflow continues, and you can see large snow accumulation on the gravel bar to the right in the photo above.

Snow survey revealed that a significant amount of snow had accumulated since our last visit on 14 January. Snow depth at the larch site averaged 117cm, while the neighbouring cedar site had depths averaging only 79cm. This difference is due to interception and melt of snow in the cedar forest canopy, such as on days like today when temperatures are positive after snowfall. The relative snow density (compared to water) was around 0.31, and the snow water equivalents are given in the chart below. This is the depth of water that would result from the complete melting of the snowpack. So far this winter the snowpack size is moderately large, and the larch site has the most snow at 37cm of snow water equivalent.