James Edward Church, Jr., and the Development of Snow Surveying for Runoff Forecasting E v e ly n e S t i t t P i c k e t t Independent S ch o la r Riggins, ID 83549 Lake Tahoe in Winter Lake Tahoe is as charming in winter as in summer, and far grander. There is the same water— in morning placid, in afternoon foam-flecked, on days of storms tempestuous. The lake never freezes; not even a film of ice fringes its edge— Sunny skies and warm noons and the lake’s own restlessness prevent. Emerald Bay alone is sometimes closed with ice, but more often it is as open as the outer lake. Even the pebbles glisten on the beach as far back as the wash of the waves extends. But beyond the reach of the waves a deep mantle of white clads the forests and caps the distant peaks. The refuse of the forests, the dusty roads, and the inequalities of the ground are all buried deep. A smooth, gently undulating surface of dazzling white has taken their place. 57 58 APCG YEARBOOK • VOLUME 57* 1995 The forest trees are laden with snow, each frond bears its pyramid and each needle its plume of white. The fresh green of the foliage and the ruddy brown of the bark are accentuated rather than subdued by their white setting. But as the eye travels the long vista of ascending and retreating forest, the green and the brown of the nearby trees fade gradually away until the forest becomes a fluffy mantle of white upon the distant mountain side. Above and beyond the forest’s utmost reaches rise the mountain crags and peaks, every angle rounded into gentle contours beneath its heavy load. James Edward Church, Jr. Before snow surveying allowed runoff forecasting, the old-timers in Nevada used to comment: “If the mountains are standing white, the bottom lands will be green in summer, but white mountain tops only bode for a bad summer for the farmer.” (Patterson 1990, per sonal communication). Western farmers looked at the encircling hills, rising like gigantic gables above the valley floor, and hoped for snow. In the lands of little rain, they depended on the snowpack high in the forest-clad mountains to melt in the spring, bringing water to thirsty ground in the valleys. Abundant snow meant abundant water while dearth of snow meant dry riverbeds, thirsty cattle, and idle machinery. In 1905 James Edward Church, Jr., originated a simple and straightforward method of measuring snow by which it was possible to forecast approximately the amount of water which would be avail able for irrigation, power, and other human needs. His practical “Mt. Rose Snow Sampler” received worldwide approval, and the quiet professor of the classics became famous for developing snow sur veying into a science (Branstead 1952, p. 5). Snow surveying may have originated in Europe, but Church re searched the subject and found little trace of its history on that continent. He related that in 1900 Charles W. Mixer attempted to measure the water content of snow in the Androscoggin Basin in Maine in an attempt to determine the prospect of filling storage lakes. PICKETT: Development of Snow Surveying 59 Mixer looked at depth only, an inadequate system for accurate as sessment. At about the same time Robert E. Horton experimented in upstate New York with weighing snow samples in his study of the physics of snow, but these experiments were soon surpassed by Church’s method which became known as the “Nevada System” (Church 1937a, p. 143, Gorelangton 1979). Church, bom in Michigan in 1869, began teaching school at age sixteen, and achieved a principalship by the age of nineteen. Eager to seek knowledge, he left this position to attend the University of Michi gan. Upon graduation in 1892 he accepted a position to teach German, Greek, and Latin at the University of Nevada-Reno (Butterfield 1950, Church 1956 diary). The winter of 1895 changed his life. For two summers he had made several ascents of the long, rugged line of the Sierra Nevada running north and south along the Nevada-Califomia border, but a colleague...
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