10 Years of Snowfall in Island Park (valley).

[christopher]

I was doing a little research this morning to see what we have left of our season for Island Park. So I went through the last 10 years of SnoTel data and compiled some charts. These are for the Island Park valley sensor, so this would be the LOWEST readings for all of Island Park.

Each screen is Auto-Sized for itself, so the peaks are NOT relative to each other, each chart can represent a SIGNIFICANTLY different amount of snow from one year to another!

But the 10 year pattern does show some predictability on peak snow and when the big melt-off comes.

 

[christopher]

2001 Snowfall

Max = 40 Inches
Melt arrived on April 13th

 

[christopher]

2002 Snowfall

Max = 56 Inches
Melt arrived on March 20th

 

[christopher]

2003 Snowfall

Max = 48 Inches
Melt arrived on March 10th

 

[christopher]

2004 Snowfall

Max = 64 Inches
Melt arrived on March 8th

 

[christopher]

2005 Snowfall

Max = 47 Inches
Melt arrived on April 5th

 

[christopher]

2006 Snowfall

Max = 65 Inches
Melt arrived on March 15th

 

[christopher]

2007 Snowfall

Max = 54 Inches
Melt arrived on March 3rd

 

[christopher]

2008 Snowfall

Max = 66 Inches
Melt arrived on April 10th

 

[christopher]

2009 Snowfall

Max = 53 Inches
Melt arrived on April 2nd

 

[christopher]

2010 Snowfall (so far)

Max = 38 Inches
Melt arrived on ????

 

[christopher]

So, what can we learn from this little exercise?

Average Max Snowfall for the last 10 years = 53 Inches


Average beginning of the end of the season in the valley.
2nd-3rd week of March.

 

[christopher]

Thinking maybe I should build up the same set of graphs for the Black Bear SnoTel site?

That might be an interesting comparison since it gets easily twice the snowfall as the valley does?

 

[LPIdaho]

Thinking maybe I should build up the same set of graphs for the Black Bear SnoTel site?

That might be an interesting comparison since it gets easily twice the snowfall as the valley does?

Yeah if you have the time to I'd love to see it, This was very interesting! Thank Chris!

 

[christopher]

Glad to see someone found some value in it.
Certainly paints a grim picture of the spring melt though.

 

[STAFFORDIRT]

At what elevation is the sno tel you are graphing? You guys get alot more snow than 53" dont ya? I rode there back about 8 years ago, you got some great sno there.

Good job, very cool!

 

[christopher]

These 10 graphs were for the Island Park VALLEY, not up in the mountains.

So this is the least amount of snow to be found in Island Park.

 

[Big D rmk700]

Nice job

 

[christopher]

Based on snowfall so far in the valley, we are 2-3 weeks ahead of the curve.
This COULD be an epic Winter!