We collected our penultimate scan (the last scan will take place when chips come off and snow is exposed)! This time, we wanted to see how much melt has occurred in fall. Turns out, melt rate is slowing down and the COC still has plenty of snow left (more than 60% by volume of what […]
Tags: LiDAR, snow storage, wood chips
We’ve been heading up every two weeks to scan the pile and collected some pretty cool data. The cross section below snows relatively consistent loss of volume – including compaction and some melting. Scanning wasn’t bad with my indispensable field assistant, Molly Murtha, especially if we remembered to bring bug spray. Across the Fence, a […]
Tags: Across the Fence, LiDAR, melt, scanning, snow storage, The Science of Storing Snow, volume change, YouTube
With some help from their summer training programs, owners Dick and Judy were able to cover the snow pile with white Geofabric to reflect back as much solar radiation as possible. With some hiccups relating to wind, they finally secured it and now the pile is fully prepped and ready for the hottest part of […]
Tags: covering, snow storage, white tarp, wood chips
Over the past year, the COC has been chipping trees that fell in a recent storm to cover the pile in a ~20+ cm layer of wood chips – with some help from new shipments of wood chips, the snow pile is finally covered. We estimate about 650 cubic meters of wood chips, or about […]
Tags: LiDAR, snow, snow pile, snow storage, wood chips
The snow pile is alive and gigantic! Since last summer, the COC has built infrastructure to support snow making down in the pit including a water pipeline, and the installation of three snow guns. Over the past week or so, the Craftsbury Outdoors Center has pumped water down to airless snow guns to create snow. […]
Tags: excavator, fan guns, LiDAR, scanning, snow, snow pile, snow storage
This week I attended the largest conference I’ve ever been to – AGU, or the American Geophysical Union, in Washington DC. I was one of 20,000 people in attendance. Themes at this conference ranged from space, to terrestrial ecosystems, to aquatic ecosystems, to ancient ecosystems… it was very all-encompassing (and a little overwhelming). One day […]
Tags: AGU, AGU 2018, poster, skiing, snow storage, winter, wood chips
Well, all the snow from our two intrepid piles is gone, finally. Surprisingly, small icy chunks hung on until late October, long enough to see the first snow flakes of fall! Now, however, is prep time for next season. The COC has decided to use Site 2, or the “Pond” Site as their Snow Depot. […]
Tags: LiDAR, ski, snow in summer, snow storage, TLS, wood chips
7-21-18 Landon and I once again drove up to Craftsbury on a bright summertime Saturday. A bike race was finishing up at Craftsbury and we wound our way around bikes and food to set up the LiDAR at our first site. After graciously thanking bikers for not passing in front of the laser, we completed […]
7-10-18 Today UVM Geology major Landon Williams and I completed surveys of the two piles at Craftsbury. Hot, sunny, and windy helped keep the bugs down while we set up LiDAR around the quickly-melting piles. This scan is the second taken after the upper CHIP pile was disrupted and I’m interested in the added effects […]
On a really hot day, in the middle of a record breaking heatwave, Lucas got out the excavator and opened up the upper snow pile, removing the chips and a sheet of plastic that seemed to have been causing lots of trouble with the snow and the chips (sliding chips, a large fissure). With lots […]
Tags: #craftsburyoutdoorcenter, #nsffunded, #uvm
Recent Comments