Over-summer snow storage – November 27 update

The pile on October 28, 2019 just before the chips were removed.

An update from Paul Bierman, UVM Geology.

By now, some of you are skiing on snow that was made last February. In mid-November, after nature coated the Craftsbury trails in 6+ inches of new snow, the COC team began excavating the stored snow and spreading it on Lemons Haunt. Pretty amazing. Old snow for the new season.

Removing the chips and exposing the snow. November 6, 2019

Storing snow worked at Craftsbury – it’s the only over-summer snow storage we know of in the US and the lowest altitude and latitude combination where snow storage has ever been attempted. After a year of experimenting with the little piles and a spring and summer figuring out how to cover the pile (and keep it covered all summer through windstorms), our final laser survey in October showed that the pile had retained about 60% by volume of the snow that Lucas, Eric, and Keith blew into the pit 9 months ago. That’s right about average from what we know of other snow saving operations. The graph below shows that the most rapid volume loss was mid-summer when the weather was the warmest. We now know that much of the loss in volume loss was compaction of the snow as it grew denser and more icy over the summer. If you venture down in the pit (as of Thanksgiving about half the stored snow is still there) you’ll see the snow left there is pretty much solid, almost ice. If this were a glacier, we’d call it firn, snow transformed over the summer to a density near that of ice with very little air left.

Snow volume in the pile over the spring, summer and fall of 2019

 You can see the history of the pile in a YouTube video edited by Quincy Massey-Bierman and read about the process in a FasterSkier article.

 If you want to learn more about the technical side of snow storage at Craftsbury, check out the paper that Hannah, whose MS thesis involves the science of the pile just published in the journal, Cryosphere. You can find even more info at our project website - have lots of photographs of the pile and the process.