Starting today: Water Year Contest!

To keep track of the seasonal changes in groundwater availability, river flow and so on, hydrologists follow a rather distinct calendar; they split up the year by movement of water through different medium. October 1st is the “first day of the new year” as it typically marks the first day of (potential) snow fall. Of course, some years snow fall as early as September and some others, snow doesn’t arrive until Christmas. Citizen scientist measurements of snow are especially helpful during these abnormal years to help models, built on standard assumptions of snow arrival, to better represent snow cover. If you go over to mountainsnow.org (a new operational snow product in real-time) you’ll see how CSO help in adjusting the output of snow to more accurately show the early snow cover throughout mountain regions in United States.

Winter is the accumulation season of water (in the form of snow) and to emphasize this critical time period, we’re this year launching a contest that will run throughout the winter from November 1, 2021 through April 30th, 2022! We’ll nominate winners in many categories, such as:

• Most observations submitted in one (1) day;
• Largest elevational transect travelled (and submitted snow observations throughout) in three (3) days; and
• Greatest geographic extent in one (1) day

This gives you six (6) months of opportunity to set objectives for your citizen science participation and plan fun trips around contributing data to snow science (and ultimately back to you and your backcountry partners!). Snow measurements can be recorded in the MountainHub app or entered in the Snow Pilot desktop program.

Questions about the contest? Send us an email at .