DENVER — Before going to the University of Colorado Boulder and becoming a scientist who studies snow, Jeff Deems fell in love with skiing.
“As backcountry enthusiasts, we've had to imagine what the snow patterns are on the landscape,” he said. “Same challenge that the water managers face: we have limited data.”
That has changed in recent years, however, thanks in part to Deems.
Measuring Colorado’s snowpack can be complicated, but it’s crucial — and not just for skiers. Water managers rely on snowpack measurements to decide how to change reservoir levels to optimize the amount of water for customers, as well as those recreating on bodies of water.
“The snowpack is our biggest reservoir seasonally,” said Deems. “So the longer we can keep it on the mountains, the better.”
Deems helped turn a NASA Jet Propulsion Lab research project into the co-founding of Airborne Snow Observatories (ASO). The company flies over the mountains in small planes equipped with light detection and ranging (LiDAR) systems that use lasers to measure the depth of the snowpack.
The flights also employ a spectrometer to measure how reflective the snowpack is. Debris from trees, dust, or soot from wildfires can land on top of the snowpack and absorb heat from the sun, making the snow melt faster.
“It looks like mowing the lawn, honestly," Deems explained. "If you look at the flight tracker, the aircraft's going back and forth, back and forth, overlapping the field of view on the ground."
There are already automated weather stations in the mountains, known as the SNOTEL network, that measure snowpack levels. However, they can sit many miles apart and generally don’t operate above 11,000 feet. ASO’s technology tracks data that fills in those gaps.
“We get the full watershed perspective,” said Deems. “Ensures that we don't miss something. We don't get surprised by there being less snow or more snow in the watershed than we expected. That gives us earlier lead time on impending drought or high flow, high water conditions that could lead to damage, or can put that extra water to use to meet a myriad of needs, including those like recreation and fishing.”
- ASO measured the snowpack at Berthoud Pass in 2023. Compare April 2023 levels to those in May 2023 in the slider below
Deems said ASO flew 20 surveys over the Colorado mountains this year, with 33 local, state and federal partners chipping in to fund flights. One of them is Denver Water, which has been using ASO flights since 2019.
“We really realized in that first year of flying that this was going to be a total game changer for how we think about the water that we have available to us in any given year,” said Taylor Winchell, climate adaptation program lead for Denver Water. “If you have a better estimate of how much water is actually going to be coming from the snowpack into your reservoir, you can make better decisions on how much water to release from that reservoir in order to capture that snowpack.”
According to Winchell, a new law passed by the Colorado State Legislature this spring establishes a state-administered water supply measurement and water forecasting program that's housed in the Colorado Water Conservation Board, the state policy agency. It essentially formalizes the technology as part of a state-run program.
Deems said the change will add oversight and continuity as more water managers across the state want to jump on board.
“Sets us up well to increase the coverage and duration and sustainability of the program,” he said.
In turn, the program is helping make Colorado’s water more sustainable, and the sky’s the limit.
