 Poster: A snowHead
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Does anybody have the foggiest how this is done? Last week, in Meribel, Meribel radio claimed 55cm in resort, 106cm on the top.
Now, there was certainly enough snow around, but...
I'd have said that at resort level it was more like 20cm - away from any artificial.
And off piste, on the top, there was grass showing through all over the place. Even on piste there were rocks in places where the wind had blown the snow off.
So, where does the propoganda come from?
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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They all use a special bendy ruler.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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In Fieberbrunn (and other places) they often have a marked pole stuck in the snow. The one in this photo is under the Reckmoos Nord chairlift (a few metres from the piste - you can see a piste marker in the background) and shows 2.5 metres of snow on a misty day at the end of last season. I imagine that that is what would be used to define the "top of the slopes" depth then. Of course, it has no direct relation to how much snow is on the piste (usually just a few cms.) but it can give some impression of the general snow cover. My suspicion is that the gauges are usually placed where snow tends to accumulate, not where it is blown away.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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They place the measuring stick in the most sheltered flat (snow is normally a lot deeper on the flat) place they can find where it recieves as little sun and wind as possible and place a wire around it so that nobody can ski the snow down around it and in these places the snow is generally deep. However using these methods I could have reported snowdepth of 50cm+ in the peaks last week but by the time you found a pitch steep enough to offer good skiing unless it was by a wall or in a gully you were skiing a mixture of grass and snow.
The thing I really want to know though is why on snow-forecast.com for the nevis range snow report it sometimes likes to report 50cm at the bottom and 200cm at the top and then change it back to believable amounts a day later. 
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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James the Last, On a serious note. At all resorts there is a fixed and protected area where they have a weather station and the equipment to measure the snow. In the larger stations they might have a number of places to do this. It is part of the pisteurs work to check these each day. However, sometimes i do wonder how correct there readings are as well. 
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You'll need to Register first of course.
You'll need to Register first of course.
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Snow quality is much more important than snow depth...
There could be 5m of snow, but on a sunny and hot day, it can resemble water skiing very quickly.
Conversely, 50cm of really decent snow on a grassy base can be a pleasure.
(Im talking about on piste here btw. Obviously, off piste it's a different ball game).
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