The expanded program of the united states weather bureau in snow‐work

Abstract

The Weather Bureau is entering its fortieth year of mountain‐snowfall reporting for the benefit of the water‐users in the Rocky Mountain States. Publication of the reports of Climatological Data was begun in the winter of 1898–99; and in the winter of 1899–1900 separate snowfall‐bulletins were published at the close of each winter month.According to the files of the Engineering News‐Record, the Monthly Weather Review, ana other national periodicals, J. Cecil Alter, now Official in Charge of the Weather Bureau Office at Salt Lake City, first suggested the mountain snow‐survey tor the benefit of irrigators in 1909–10, and made the first systematic mountain‐watershed snow‐surveys in the country, on Maple Creek Watershed, Utah, beginning in March 1911. This work was done under the supervision of A. H. Thiessen, then the Section Director, at Salt Lake City. Detailed reports of these surveys were made in 1911, 1912, and 1913. From that time, snow‐surveys were made annually by the Bureau, on an increasing number of watersheds, the service being done cooperatively with the Utah State Experiment Station in the last several years.