A new format to display the evolution of our snowpack

[cmor]

What do you think?

http://winterscience.com/

My best effort so far to aggregate our data into one place. It's not perfect, and I look forward to comments.

[My Pet Powder Goat]

Wow! that is awesome. Just diving in and first impressions; Very useful to get timelined data like that. love how seamless the photo obsoervation are. you can look at them without leaving the page.

Is there a way to adjust the outlook to a week / month / year timeline?

edit: found it. Top L on page. duh

[Tap]

Chris, I forwarded this my my partners at COAA. We might be in touch to learn how you didnthis, as it jibes with some things we were talking about.

Tap

[wendigo]

would be intriguing to have the avy level forecast in a color coded line as. well. I assume the pink is forecast? Weather service, or avy service, or combination?
Nice aggregation. I'll pass it along to our Avy Center Group as well.

[neck beard]

ooo, this is nice!

Damn, I wish I had the ability to do that.

I really like the wind rose. Some people may be unsure of it shows direction from, or direction to?

The comments link doesn't give any results.

If you made this yourself - well done!

[Bunion 2020]

Cmor, is this all refined data from CSI Dat files?

[stalefish3169]

very cool

[Sinecure]

Hey, you even picked colors that the color-blind among us can discern. Less common than you'd think. Google Map's traffic coloring on iPhone is nearly impossible for me to decipher except for the worst of traffic situations (can't tell green from yellow nor yellow from orange in their color choices).

[moose pit]

Very nice, easy to read (not colour blind ) and contains great info without being too crazy.

[cmor]

Cmor, is this all refined data from CSI Dat files?

Indirectly yes, we send our data to NWAC and then I just parse their page to take it back.

The comments link doesn't give any results.

The comments are currently just a mouseover pop-up, I should add a full pop up window on a click.

would be intriguing to have the avy level forecast in a color coded line as. well. I assume the pink is forecast? Weather service, or avy service, or combination?

I thought about a hazard rating, but it's broken down by aspect and elevation and I'm not I don't want to throw a whole rose to busy up the interface. Maybe I will think of something more svelte in the future. The pink is forecast, it runs directly off of the GFS.

[scottcha]

I like the layout, cool to see all that info in a nice compact infographic. Have a couple of questions:

How come new snow depth is kind of minimized in the interface (and it seems only SWE is shown and no inches of accumulation)? Seems like that should be given more prominence than temperature (especially since it has a greater impact on avalanche danger than temp as well as skiability).

Its cool to see all the info in one spot though is there a scenario for your users you want to highlight? A powder factor (ala the old power forecast site I cant remember the name of) or a danger factor?

Would also be cool to see some accounting of aspect in the data (since you are trying to pull in observations & profiles and whatnot).

BTW, the iPhone app NW Ski Buddy (maybe its NW Snow Buddy?) does some similar data aggregation on the NWAC data.

Keep up the good work!

[stizzmt]

Really cool! I'm having a little trouble understanding the "precip since" row. A key would help, hope I'm not missing it. Thanks a lot, I'll pass it on to my friends.

[Hacksaw]

This doesn't tell me much about the structure of the snowpack (i.e., buried surface Hoar layers, RFC layers, etc...). But, it is "interesting" from a HS, HNS and SWE standpoint.

[cmor]

Really cool! I'm having a little trouble understanding the "precip since" row. A key would help, hope I'm not missing it. Thanks a lot, I'll pass it on to my friends.

You and everyone else. At some point I will add a help icon. The idea behind precip since is looking at the amount of water since that date. i.e. since Nov 21 we've had 9.13" of water. The idea behind it being, if there was a weak layer formed on Nov 21st, you could look to easily see how much load had been put on that layer, and if enough rain has fallen to likely settle it. I am constantly trying to figure out how much water we've gotten in a certain time frame, hopefully that will make it a bit quicker.

This doesn't tell me much about the structure of the snowpack (i.e., buried surface Hoar layers, RFC layers, etc...). But, it is "interesting" from a HS, HNS and SWE standpoint.

My goal is to provide an easy way to get a general idea of the current snowpack and likely avalanche conditions. It should be possible to get a good concept of what you will see by looking at the past weather events. To enhance the weather it's supplemented with snowpits and images of avalanches, crystals, etc. On Nov 26th there are a couple of pits so at that point there is some solid structure data. Then looking at the past week there is some warming and rain, followed by a little snow, another brief warmup, and then 3 days of cold and no precip. So you have a melt-freeze crust, followed by some low density snow, followed by another crust, maybe followed by some surface hoar if the nights were clear, which you don't know directly from the weather. But there is a photo of surface hoar on the surface for dec 4th, and even a warning of its impending growth in the photos on Dec 1st, so you know it formed. You can also look at some thin slabs breaking out on in the new snow in the Dec 1st photos. You can add all that to top of the pits on Nov 26th, and hopefully you get a decent picture of what is going on. I could add RH which would give you a better idea of cloud cover for surface hoar, but I'm still trying to keep it as simple as possible. That may sound like a lot, but it should happen organically if you are looking at it often.

It is not necessarily targeted to a professional audience, but it is targeted to someone with a decent amount of avalanche experience. If it's possible to simplify further and expand the audience I would. It is easy to over complicate the problem, when it is usually the same issues repeating themselves. Anyone have suggestions on that side of things? A small help pop-pup would be useful if nothing else, although I would like to keep it as training free as possible.

[icelanticskier]

It is easy to over complicate the problem

this^^^^^^^^

Anyone have suggestions on that side of things?

nice idea you got goin, but imo a bit too much goin on when a local advisory read daily (when they can't get out) is pretty much as much as most folks would need.

to be quite honest, i looked at that chart and was like, wha?

rog

[cmor]

this^^^^^^^^



nice idea you got goin, but imo a bit too much goin on when a local advisory read daily (when they can't get out) is pretty much as much as most folks would need.

to be quite honest, i looked at that chart and was like, wha?

rog

The more you get into the avalanche forecasting side of things, even if it is only recreationally oriented, the more you have to track the weather. Often times you need to look at layers formed weeks or months ago. It is very difficult to look through pages and pages of telemetry to do this, especially if you don't have the good fortune of living in the mountains to constantly keep up to date. In my pit work lately any time there is a layer I cannot place temporally, I've been pulling this up on the smartphone to be sure of the date and conditions it formed under. The advisory should be your first piece of information and is adequate for many users, but to dig deeper it is important to look at the actual weather data.

[sb]

very nice