Research Committee on Snow, Western Snow Conference, 1945

Abstract

The Research Committee on Snow was organized in 1942 in response to a feeling that the accumulated snow data should be analyzed to search for possible solution of inconsistencies and errors that had appeared in the forecasts of stream flow. At the Snow Conference at Sacramento Harold Conkling [1941] voiced the need, and Fred Paget, Chairman of the Conference designated the following members to form the Committee: J. E. Church, Chairman; R. A. Work; Joseph Kittredge; George D, Clyde; Ralph L, Parshall; and Merrill Bernard. The accumulated data unfortunately still remain unanalyzed, but research and inquiry have gone steadily on.Many questions submitted by the Committee to the Chairman are highly specialized, as are the following by Joseph Kittredge (the University of California, Berkeley, California): (1) Can stream‐flow forecasting be improved by locating part of the snow‐survey courses under trees? (2) Is snow density the best index of the melting of snow? If not, what other measure would be both practicable and more reliable? (3) What are the relative merits of density and snow quality as indices of melting? (4) Can runoff from snow be expressed as a function of several factors such as density and water equivalent of snow, insolation, degree‐days above freezing, rainfall, and snowfall during melting season, to give a more reliable forecast than would be obtained by the use of only one or two factors? (5) Can we secure confirmation and refinement of findings of W. T. Wilson [1941] on thermodynamics of snow melt? For example, does snow melt by condensation on the snow surface increase with wind velocity?