Cisco Sonar

By Bryce Nielson
This is a column from 2017 to put this year's snow in perspective

Lots of snow in the Bear Lake Valley.  I received an email from the editor asking me if I would write something about the snowfall.  I guess she figured I had been here a long time (1974) and often brag about being an observer of our environment that I would have some enlightening comments.  There was only one problem.  As the snow started, I left Bear Lake for the Riviera Maya in Mexico for a week.  I heard about it but missed it laying on the beach.  I did arrive home to the aftermath however.

Weather is tricky business.  It is like fishing or anything else.  You remember the exceptional events but everything else rapidly fades into the fog.  I have seen many major snowfall events here but struggle to remember the specifics.  Drifting around in my mind is one snowstorm in years past that dumped about 5 feet.  I don’t remember what year or date it occurred but I do remember many buildings having their roofs collapse.  It may have been a result of the snow or a rain afterwards.  I do remember specifically a yellow equipment shed, directly south of Brian House’s home flattening, never to be rebuilt.  Other snowstorms had significant snow but the effect was magnified by heavy wind.  Those are the ones that close schools.

So you have moved to Bear Lake in the last 10 years.  You are now snowed in or out.  You soon learn what a Skidster is since it is the only thing, other than a big blower, that can deal with this amount of snow.  So what does the future hold?  The only thing that is accurate about weather is what happened the day before.  So I decided to use real data about where we are now compared to past years.  The NRCS maintains SNOTEL stations to measure precipitation.

https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/main/national/water/snowsurvey/

  

Remember, this is a moment in time over years.  Lots of things can happen from here on but 2017 was almost as high as 2008.  Remember that?