Contrasting Starts to Memorial Day Weekend

Looking for pow this Memorial Day?  The base is pathetic, but you can find freshies today in the Adirondacks of New York and the mountains of northern New England.

Whiteface Memorial Highway 25 May 2013
Source: Whiteface Facebook Page Morgan Langey

Meanwhile in Utah, the Wasatch snowpack is taking a beating with temperatures near 60 at 8000 feet.  I walked up to our observing site near Alta at about noon and was dismayed to find that a river runs through it!

If only I knew this site turned into a stream bed during the runoff!  Special thanks to whoever hung our interval board and snow depth sensor on the ladder.  Of course, it could have provided reliable stream depth measurements instead (they can do that).  This is a prime example of how it can be difficult to get representative information about the snowpack based on an observation collected at a single point!