Bend Bulletin: OSU project aims to sharpen the science of snowpack forecasts
Photo: While working on an OSU snow depth survey, professor David Hill uses a magna-probe electronic device that collects information on snow depth, location, and time, while working near Dutchman Flat and Mt. Bachelor, on March 16. (Andy Tullis/The Bulletin)
By Michael Kohn
As climate variability and rising temperatures reshape water supplies across the American West, researchers at Oregon State University are working to improve how snowpack — a critical natural reservoir — is measured and forecast.
Led by civil engineering professor David Hill, the project is funded by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which oversees water resources in much of the West. The agency recently awarded $4.6 million to five projects designed to advance snow monitoring technologies, with an additional $4.6 million in cost-share funding bringing the total investment to more than $9.2 million.
Two of those awards went to Oregon State, including about $946,000 for a project focused on improving estimates of snowpack by combining airborne LiDAR data with ground-based measurements.
The effort reflects a growing urgency among water managers to better understand how much water is stored in mountain snow, which supplies rivers, reservoirs and irrigation systems during the dry summer months.
“A significant portion of water in the West is locked up as snow throughout the winter,” Hill told The Bulletin. “Being able to forecast how much of that will be available in the summer is critical for decision-making.”
Across the region, snowpack has long acted as a natural storage system, gradually releasing water as temperatures rise. But warming winters are increasingly disrupting that cycle, with more precipitation falling as rain instead of snow and melt occurring earlier in the year.
Understanding snowpack and how to best manage it is critical in dry years like the one Central Oregon is now experiencing — snowpack in the Upper Deschutes Basin was just 17% of normal as of Friday, according to data compiled by the Natural Resources Conservation Service.
Skuyler Herzog, an assistant professor in the natural resources program at Oregon State University-Cascades, said snowpack plays a vital role across ecosystems and economies.
“Snowpack is an important natural resource that stores winter precipitation high up in the mountains, slowly releasing the water throughout the spring and summer,” Herzog said. “These are times when farmers, fish, and recreationalists need the water the most.”
Yet measuring that resource remains a challenge, he said.
“Despite the importance of snowpack, it is very difficult and time consuming to measure how much snow there is at any given time,” Herzog said. “In fact, there are relatively few places in Central Oregon where we have real-time measurements of snowpack, and these measurements don’t tell us much about what is happening across the broader landscape.”
The Oregon State project focuses on the central Cascades, including terrain stretching from South Sister to near Waldo Lake. Over three snow seasons — from 2025 through 2028 — researchers will collect and analyze data to better capture how snow accumulates, changes and melts.
One key component involves airborne LiDAR, or light detection and ranging, which uses laser pulses from aircraft flying at about 12,000 feet to map snow depth across mountainous terrain. The flights provide detailed snapshots of snow distribution that would be difficult to obtain from the ground alone.
“The LiDAR project is so important because it will produce detailed information about snowpack across hundreds of square miles of terrain, providing a much more complete picture of how much snow … is in the watershed and how long it lasts each year,” Herzog said.
A second component blends those aerial measurements with “point data,” including snow depth readings collected by researchers and members of the public. The work builds on the Community Snow Observations project, a NASA-supported effort that encourages backcountry users to submit measurements from across the landscape. By combining these data sources, researchers aim to create more accurate models of snow distribution — not just where snow exists, but how deep it is in different locations.
“When you look at the mountains from town, you see white and it looks uniform,” Hill said. “But when you actually measure it, the variability is incredible. It can change dramatically over short distances.”
Understanding that variability is key to estimating how much water is stored in the snowpack, he said.
The project’s third focus is cost efficiency. Airborne surveys are expensive, and researchers are exploring whether detailed measurements from smaller areas can be used to estimate conditions in surrounding regions. If successful, that approach could expand monitoring coverage without significantly increasing costs.
The data has a wide range of applications. Water managers rely on snowpack estimates to determine how much water to allocate to cities, agriculture and ecosystems. Improved forecasts can help prevent over-allocation in dry years and better prepare for shortages.
“This information will help managers predict how much water will be available for wildlife, agriculture, and cities,” Herzog said, adding it could also improve forecasts for avalanche and wildfire conditions.
Skiers, hikers and others in the outdoors industry also benefit. Daily snowpack models produced by the research team can help backcountry users assess conditions, including avalanche risk after major storms.
This winter’s below-average snowpack in Oregon highlights both the challenges and importance of the work. While low snow years can limit water supply, they also provide an opportunity to test whether models perform well under a range of conditions.
“In a way, having a very low year is a good test,” Hill said. “We want to know that our models can handle extremes.”
Historically, snowpack in the Cascades has shown significant year-to-year variability, with extremely low years sometimes followed by above-average seasons. But Hill said long-term warming trends remain a concern, particularly as winter temperatures rise.
“Getting cold and wet at the same time is what builds snowpack,” he said. “We’re increasingly seeing situations where we may still get precipitation, but it’s too warm for it to fall as snow.”
The Bureau of Reclamation’s Snow Water Supply Forecast Program aims to address those challenges by supporting new technologies and approaches to monitoring snow. All funded projects include airborne LiDAR surveys and efforts to integrate those data into water supply forecasting tools.
Hill said public participation will remain an important part of the Oregon project as it continues.
“People can contribute simply by measuring snow depth when they’re out in the mountains,” he said. “Those observations are incredibly valuable.”
As water systems across the West face mounting pressure from climate change and population growth, researchers and managers alike are increasingly focused on improving the data that underpins critical decisions.
“This is really about making the best possible use of the water resources we have,” Hill said.
