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About The nugget. (Sisters, Or.) 1994-current | View Entire Issue (July 17, 2019)
6 Wednesday, July 17, 2019 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon Missing Sisters man found safe How much water do snowpacks hold? By Steve Lundeberg Correspondent CORVALLIS 4 Oregon State University researchers have developed a new com- puter model for calculating the water content of snow- packs, providing an important tool for water-resource man- agers and avalanche forecast- ers as well as scientists. <In many places around the world, snow is a critical component of the hydrologi- cal cycle,= said OSU Civil Engineering Professor David Hill. <Directly measuring snow-water equivalent is difficult and expensive and can9t be done everywhere. But information about snow depth is much easier to get, so our model, which more accu- rately estimates snow-water equivalent from snow depth than earlier models, is a big step forward.= The findings, published in The Cryosphere, are related to a NASA-funded snow- depth project co-led by Hill and also involving Oregon State Ph.D. student Ryan Crumley. The project is called Com- munity Snow Observations and is part of NASA9s Citi- zen Science for Earth Sys- tems program. Snowshoers, backcountry skiers and snow- machine users are gathering data to use in computer mod- eling of snow-water equiva- lent, or SWE. The Community Snow Observations research team kicked off in February 2017. Led by Hill, Gabe Wolken of the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Anthony PHOTO PROVIDED Researchers have developed models to more accurately measure the water content of snowpacks. Arendt of the University of Washington, the project orig- inally focused on Alaskan snowpacks. Researchers then started recruiting citi- zen scientists in the Pacific Northwest. Currently, the project has more than 2,000 participants. The University of Alaska Fairbanks has spearheaded the public involvement aspect of the project, while the University of Washington9s chief role is managing the data. Hill and Crumley are responsible for the modeling. In addition to snow-depth information collected and uploaded by recreationists using avalanche probes, vast amounts of data are also available thanks to LIDAR, a remote sensing method that uses a pulsed laser to map the Earth9s topography. The new model developed by the Community Snow Observations team and col- laborators at the University of New Hampshire calculates snow-water equivalent by factoring in snow depth, time of year, 30-year averages (normals) of winter precipi- tation, and seasonal differ- ences between warm and cold temperatures. <Using those climate nor- mals rather than daily weather data allows our model to pro- vide SWE estimates for areas far from any weather station,= Hill said. Researchers validated the model against a database of snow pillow measurements 3 a snow pillow measures snow-water equivalents via the pressure exerted by the snow atop it 4 as well as a pair of large independent data sets, one from western North America, the other from the northeastern United States. <We also compared the model against three other models of varying degrees of complexity built in a vari- ety of geographic regions,= Hill said. <The results show our model performed better than all of them against the validation data sets. It9s an effective, easy-to-use means of estimation very useful for vast areas lacking weather instrumentation 3 areas for which snow depth data are readily available and daily weather data aren9t.= In addition to NASA, the National Science Foundation and the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science supported this research. The codes needed to make this conversion from snow depth to SWE are freely available from the project team. An 86-year-old Sisters man was found safe near Government Camp after being reported missing last week. The Deschutes County Sheriff9s Office sent out a bulletin seeking the public9s help in locating Elwin <Gale= Larson after he was reported missing from his residence in the 16000 block of Cattle Drive Road in Sisters on Tuesday morning, July 9. Sgt. William Bailey of the Deschutes County Sheriff9s Office reported that Larson was located later that day, with his vehicle, in the area of Government Camp. <A motorist stopping at a gas station had seen the recent KTVZ alert on Facebook regarding Larson being miss- ing,= Bailey stated. <As the motorist walked into the sta- tion, she saw Larson and immediately thought she rec- ognized him from the alert. After checking her phone to confirm it was him, she noti- fied law enforcement.= Government Camp is over 100 miles from Sisters. Larson9s family drove there to reunite with him. www.NuggetNews.com Three Sisters Lions Club 10th Annual YARD SALE Thursday-Saturday, July 18-20, 9 am-5 pm Sunday, July 21, 9 am-2 pm SNO CAP MINI STORAGE Sisters Industrial Park 157 Sisters Park Dr. • 541-549-3575 www.SistersStorage.com • State-of-the-art Security Technology • Sizes from 5x5 to 12x40 • Individual Gate Codes • Long-term Discounts • On-site Manager West end of Main Avenue, next to Bright Spot Juice & Java and Sisters Car Wash — Questions, call 541-419-1279 or 541-410-6831 —