October scan: closing in

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 […]

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June: White Tarp Time

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 […]

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April: The wood chip cover

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 […]

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December: AGU, a huge conference in DC.

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 […]

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November: Scanning the reshaped snow site

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. […]

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