From the Fort Collins Coloradoan (Ryan Maye Handy):
Since 1935, snow measurements have been taken off Cameron Pass. In that time, the pass has changed very little. When [Todd Boldt] and [John Fusaro] took their first measurements of the season Thursday, the pass was as it often has been — bitterly cold, windy and shrouded in a near white-out blizzard. The two men will return to Cameron Pass, along with four other sites, monthly to measure snow until April.
While Boldt, Fusaro and the snow are constants, the federal funding for the valuable program is not.
Looming budget cuts almost forced NRCS to cut 47 of its 72 snow-measuring sites in Colorado, and since 2011 the program has taken a 15 percent cut. Shutting down the “snow course” part of the program, which mixes machine measurements with manpower, would have meant an end to nearly a century of snow data. The Northern Colorado Water Conservancy District would have lost four of the 23 snow measuring sites that it relies on for snowpack indicators.
Fearful of losing snowpack measurements, a group of 100 water conservancy districts and farmers banded together at the end of last year to try to come up with a funding plan.
They were saved in December by some adjustments in NRCS staffing — which reduced its snow surveyors from 42 to 19 — that will fund the snow survey program through August 2014. But come August, the battle for funding will begin again…
The snowpack off Cameron pass is above the 30-year average, at 102 percent. While that bodes well for the snowpack, the measurement is hardly something to get comfortable with — Colorado’s snowiest month is March, and the best indicators for drought and spring runoff are measured then.