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snowpro doesn't work on macs and snow pilot is a good effort but clunky and full of bugs. will someone please write some good software for documenting snowpits and ax occurences that runs on a mac os.
if it already exists and i don't know about it...apologies and please enlighten me.
I have an Excel template and instructions that I got off the avalanche.org site a number of years ago. Turns out it was made by Dave Ream, of the Wasatch NF. I haven't used it in a while- have been wrestling with Snow Pilot (know what you mean by clunky), but you are welcome to give it a try. I am using 10.5.5 and it opened up just fine. Pop me an email at lwolfe dot avalanchereview at gmail dot com and I'll send it to you.
Someone here (Buzzworthy - thanks for the reminder JJJJS) was working for a company a while back that was making software for a datalogger similar to what foresters use - a stand alone unit that could upload info to a computer. Of course I can't remember who it was or who they worked for and if it was at all Mac compatible. Helpful, eh? Mebbe try a search....
Was that Buzzworthy? I though he was working on something like that, or maybe it was hardware/handheld's he worked with for forestry guys.Quote:
Originally Posted by telemike
ding ding ding 'twuzz Buzzworthy...
ding, ding, ding indeed...
yes, it was buzzworthy, he no longer works for that company, and i don't have a thousand dollars to spend on a pocket gizmo.
curious about that excel thing salsa but what i really need is something that runs on a mac and can export a pit graph as a jpeg. that seems to be one of the bugs in snowpilot. i'll shoot you an email and some pics for TAR. pray for snow...
Yeah, Buzy was knocking field books. If anyone is interested in my new field book PM me....Quote:
Originally Posted by covert
A web application would be a great tool for recording snowpit data and producing graphs. Would also facilitate sharing with others. Too bad I'm already quite overbooked on my current work or I'd add this to my stack.
snowpilot has some web connectivity but it's a pretty primitive program. pm me if the project makes it to your stack and you'd like some input.Quote:
Originally Posted by CookieMonster
^^ homemadesalsa, I dropped you an email for that excel sheet. thanks..
Khyber- spreadsheet folder is off at ya in the email. Do let me know if it works- it has been buried on my hard drive for a while.
Covert- photos for TAR? Please? Pretty please. I don't have a cover shot for 27/3 yet, just need a good photo with a killer story.
Not in the Tetons, but a good story and a couple shots hereQuote:
Originally Posted by homemadesalsa
http://www.wildsnow.com/1557/braun-huts-avalanches/
Thanks for the link, you're right, great story and photos. Well see if he writes me back. But in the meantime... Covert?
Completely useless to anyone else on this thread, but the Japan Avalanche Network developed a nice web app for profile plotting, all data and plots publicly available.Quote:
Originally Posted by CookieMonster
http://spin.nadare.jp/images/ProfileChart.jpg
^^^^^^^
I may not be able to read Japanese, but you can still get a lot of that snow profile.
yo salsa,
sent you some stuff, hopefully my server cowboy's up and it makes it through this century...
This already exists at Avert.ca. This has everything you need from weather obs to stability to Profiles in a nice clear format. BUT you need to be a professional. A good thing.Quote:
Originally Posted by CookieMonster
That Japanese tool looks neat. My current experiments: I've got some homebrew Win32 software that I can use to make a profile ( and edit ) it. Haven't written a command to produce HTML for the profile. I've almost finished the HTML sample but don't have the time at present to finish. Of course the drawback to my approach is that it uses Win32 binary software, not a web app, and I also haven't finished the software.
http://www.scenomics.com/internal/ac...snowpit_01.htm ( Sample profile, junk data. )
Implementing a JavaScript to convert some ASCII data to HTML is relatively easy. Implementing a full web application with interactive editing of the profile is significantly more difficult. Especially with HTML's poor support for graphics and poor SVG support in browsers.
Covert: I like your site.
like i said, the full web application with interactive editing already exists at avert.ca Take a look below at the AKAIC's page to familiarize yourself with the product. There are huge amounts of data available to the professional user with a login, however the public reports as shown in this link are fairly limited. Avert has an interactive tool for graphing profiles as well as every other snow and avalanche observation relevant to a professional level operation.
http://management.avert.ca/pub/?acti...rofile&opid=89
click i agree then scroll right and click the Print tool to view full size image. These
The avert.ca site is great. I'd like to experiment with integrating profile rendering with some relatively fancy graphics tools I'm in the process of implementing.
Those guys are very excited and receptive to feedback. Look em up, they may be interested in your help.
I work at a forecast center cbavalanchecenter.org that has recently adopted avert for our data organization system and things seem to be great. Quite popular up north, but we are currently the only ones using it in the lower 48...
cookie monster, what about an iphone app?
Took a look at avert.ca... I am envious - especially of the data on the text page. It sets a great example, really inspirational. Is it designed to compliment the CAA InfoEx - some data available to the general public, input by professionals?
Besides our local 'official' data repository I have been gathering AM study plot data in English for local use, plus recording field observations in my blog (but I don't make a stability forecast).
http://steepdeepjapan.com/tenki-data.
I'd like to have the IT know-how to present my study plot and field weather data a little more like avert.com
Hohes - basically yes to your question.
thanks for the link mike. looks like avert might be the ticket. i just registered.
cookie, if you mean the penumbra site thanks to you too. that was my first (and so far last) attempt at building a website. it was pretty fun but i took a different approach with regard to locating clients so it's been in hibernation for a few years.
iPhone app -that would be neat but probably well outside my area of expertise. Avert.ca is really a cool site, I've been looking around more. It's fascinating. One of my curiosities is figuring out how to produce graphics suitable for comprehension by laymen. Snowpits are conceptually pretty simple, but obviously the interpretation is more complex. Since data sampling forms much of the basis for perception of instability, it would help me if the information were easier to find ( i.e. cheap for anyone to integrate and publish ). The snow world is just awash with really useful information but I sometimes have a hard time finding it except when I run across it by chance.
The Swiss show profile data with a simple graphic, data gathered with Ram Penetration. It could be a useful way for you to classify the snow pack into a limited number of patterns that are more easily comprehended by the layman than a typical profile chart.Quote:
Originally Posted by CookieMonster
I can't read German very well at all, but of you check this page you see Switzerland with various penetration profiles collected at different sites. They are colour coded according to stability (green, amber, red).
http://www.slf.ch/lawineninfo/schneeinfo/sds/index_EN
There is a fixed number of 10 possible hardness profiles, you can see them in blue on the right hand side of the map. Clicking the profile set gives you the interpretation key (in German). I think it also explains the colour key at the bottom. http://www.slf.ch/lawineninfo/schnee...aeuterungen_DE
Scroll down to see this image of the 10 profiles...
http://www.slf.ch/lawineninfo/schnee...ds/profiltypen
Here is how it works:
Clicking on a profile icon on the map gives you a reasonably standard profile. At the moment near Chur you get profile number 2, in red (poor stability). It is a layman summary of the below chart. Making sense as well: 1F slab on top of facets and depth hoar.
http://www.slf.ch/avalanche/sdsmap/20081202/43650.jpg
^^^^^^
I will take the combo No. 6 snow profile to go with a nice side of pow.
Who is this 'layman' you speak of that would be interested and able to extrapolate worthwhile snowpack data from those graphics? My feeling is that those require a good bit experience/training to read. To me it seems like danger rating as well as synopsis is more valuable to the layperson bc community.
When I think of easy to read graphics I think of things similar to the graphics (cartoon like) on our site http://www.cbavalanchecenter.org , not profiles (in any format).
In our case if the user wants more data they can look at avert. I think there are really two different audiences here. The professional or aspiring pro and the recreational cb traveler. With only the former even remotely interested in the amount of data filtering/computer digging involved in something like your SLF example or avert.
It's just computer graphics research so the usefulness is unclear. Usually my computer graphics work has a clearly defined "usefulness" ( i.e. profits ). This work doesn't really have a defined usefulness yet. By way of example: contour maps also require a good bit of training to read ... but only if you think about "maps" in terms of "contour maps" all the time. I've made some other maps that are much easier to read without any training at all.
I'm curious if the same can be done with snow profiles. Perhaps the usefulness will be "reducing uncertainty" or something along those lines. For the recreationist ( maybe an average guy such as myself ) the danger rating is useful at the synoptic scale, but quickly becomes less useful at the meso scale, and can't necessarily be trusted at the slope scale ( during conditional instability ) unless it is augmented with information about current conditions. Information about current conditions might include snowpit data.
That's why it might be nice if it were easier to learn how to interpret snow profiles. It is possible that different visualization techniques might help with interpretation. It can be done with maps so I believe it can be done with profiles as well. Just not quite sure how.
That sounds like a fair assessment.Quote:
Originally Posted by mikebrom
Snowpit profiles are pretty easy to look at. I'd be more interested in software for relational tracking of snowpit data. Snowpits overlaid onto a topomap. Snowpits arranged by time on a topomap. Snowpits vs. nearby weather center data. There may not be enough data points yet for this to be useful but integrating the pits into a larger picture is something perhasp software could be useful for (or perhaps something like this exists and I don't know it)
Something else that interests me is seeing the "area of relevance" for a given snowpit applied to a map. I've heard different theories on the extent of relevance ( i.e. Relevant to nowhere else, relevant to the drainage, relevant to the slope. ) It would be interesting to see this mapped with some interesting visualizations, such as shading the terrain around the snowpit and comparing that information with other pits and avalanche occurrences. Rendering a big picture version of the prior.
One thing that I hadn't seen until this discussion was the idea of using colour coding to present the snowpit data. That certainly would be helpful.
Color coding would be interesting. For Example, one could assign colors to corresponding stability perhaps based on Lemons or Yellow Flag scores?