Finally, we're off

(Sorry Victoria…) This shows Australian snow depths for season 2014 measured by Snowy Hydro Limited at Spencers Creek near Charlotte Pass village midway between Perisher Valley and Thredbo, NSW, against a background of selected historical depth information. You may need to click refresh on your browser to see the latest plot.

Spencers Creek snow depths for season 2014, from Snowy Hydro Limited

Spencers Creek snow depths for season 2014, from Snowy Hydro Limited

 

Notes:

  • Depths are recorded on a measuring course north of the Kosciusko Road between the Spencers Creek crossing and Charlotte Pass, at about 1830m elevation. This is a high altitude, natural snow site (no snowmaking or grooming).
  • The measurement method is described here. A Mount Rose snow sampler is used to measure the depth and take a core sample at 7 locations about 30 m apart, which are averaged to give the result. The cores are weighed to measure the snowpack density and calculate the water-equivalent depth (not published on-line).
  • Measurements are generally made every Thursday, but the series is not uniformly sampled. The first year is poorly sampled (1954), while others are heavily sampled (daily in parts of 1955-1960). To produce a uniformly sampled series for analysis the background data has been resampled every Thursday, with gap filling by linear interpolation.
  • The 7-day moving averages and moving medians are plotted centred, and are lightly smoothed. (The median is the middle value – where half the seasons are deeper, half thinner.)
  • The average and median of the annual peak depths exceed the peaks of the moving average and moving median depths because the annual peak depths do not all occur in the same week of the year.