Deep Profiles With the Snow Scope Probe
Perhaps the largest benefit of the Snow Scope Probe is the ability to collect snow hardness profiles objectively without having to dig a pit*. In shallower snowpacks, digging a pit is reasonable yet still time consuming , but when things get deep, digging to sample layers 2+ m down becomes an hours long, day altering activity. With the Snow Scope Probe, sampling deeper snow can happen in a matter of seconds, unlocking views into multiple meter deep snowpacks that typically are not recorded due to the massive amount of labor involved!
In designing the Snow Scope, we made sure to make the probe modular, meaning that the sensors and “smarts” of the probe are all located on the very front. Behind this, “dumb” pole sections can be attached, theoretically to make a probe as long as the deepest snowpack imagineable.
As seen above, our “standard” probe comes with a collapsible pole that creates a probe 160cm in length. On the right, we’ve attached 5 additional 50cm extenders to the standard probe, creating a probe 410cm long (shown next to our tallest friend for scale)! These extenders are attached via durable threaded connections, and can be assembled quite quickly.
Recently, we were able to use this absurdly long probe in our record deep snowpack here in Utah. Below shows the technique used to push the Snow Scope through ~4m of snow, and the snow profile created as a result (showing a really nice right side up, deep, and healthy snowpack!). The entire process of probe assembly, snow sample, and data processing only took 1-2 minutes - juusst a bit faster than digging a 4m deep pit would take.
Being able to sample deep snow quickly opens up a ton of new potential in snowpack measurement and analysis. Just a few possibilites include:
Tracking Deep Persistant Weak Layers over time and space
Automatically documenting snowpack depth variation
Collecting many profiles to the ground in deep snowpacks to augment hydrology models (more data coming on this front soon!)
While the results of our 4m test probes recently in Utah demonstrate the potential of deep profiles, there is an important limitation to consider. Unlike in our deep and relatively light Utah snowpack, many areas that have snow reaching similar or greater depths are in maritime climates that typically see denser snow and thick ice layers. This can be an issue due to the diameter of the Snow Scope Probe (18mm), which makes it difficult to physically push through very hard ice layers to reach the bottom of the snowpack. So before you commit to using a Snow Scope for your next deep snowpack or glaciology project, think about what type of snow you will be probing! Typically, we don’t recommend more than 3 extenders (3m total length) for the majority of snowpacks.
We’re just starting to wrap our heads around what sampling really deep snow quickly can accomplish, so if you have projects or applications you think this would work for, we’d love to hear from you at contact@propagationlabs.com .
*We like to emphasize that we aren’t against digging pits! Only that Pits are still the only way to collect tons of meaningful data about the snowpack, and that’s why we’ve created the snow scope app as well to help record those pit observations.
