Tracking Colorado's Changing Snowpack Patterns

About this episode

The episode discusses the monitoring of Colorado's snowpack and the impact of dust on snow reflectivity and melt timing.

For over two decades, the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies has been monitoring Colorado's snowpack from weather stations on Red Mountain Pass. Their team digs snow pits every few weeks documenting dust layers, measuring snow crystals, and tracking how the snowpack reflects sunlight. This year they're recording unusually low snow conditions across the state while studying how dust particles reduce snow's reflectivity and speed up melt timing. Since snowpack provides 70 percent of Colorado...

Topics covered

• snowpack
• climate change
• Colorado
• environment
• weather monitoring

Keywords

• snowpack
• Colorado
• dust particles
• reflectivity
• melt timing
• weather stations
• climate monitoring

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies

Places: Colorado, Red Mountain Pass

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