Snow Ratios

The snow ratio was a great tool in helping me estimate snow depth. As I explained in the index page, since we know the SWE, we can predict the snow depth, as long as we know the ratio between the two. This was the basis for estimating snow depth.

Here are some questions I had when thinking about snow ratios.

• When does the snow ratio change?
• Is it affected by temperature?
• Is it affected by month?
• Is it affected by elevation?

I made a few visualizations in helping me answer those questions.

Elevation

Holding other variables constant, elevation does not affect a visible change. However, what we do see that is interesting are the dense bands of observations with a 10:1 ratio, along with 7.5 , 7, and 5. These are furthur explained here.

Month

Unlike the elevation graph, there is both variation in spread and boxplot location with month, where the snow ratio seems to be highest and most spread in the fall.

How will this help us?

We always have the SWE, but not always the snow depth. Using the graph above, we know the ratio between the two, and we also know the ratio changes depending on the month. To find the snow depth, we simply multiply the ratios above by the SWE. Of course, the boxplots don’t give us super succinct values within the month, and that’s why later I performed a regression.

Temperature

Temperature looks to also add some insight on how snow ratio changes, and probably is the driving reason behind why the ratio changes per month.

Repeating observations at certain snow ratios are also easily seen.

The regression I selected to use later involved both month and temperature.