Snowtel

[mhines-usgs]

• [ ] where does snowtel data exist
• [ ] overlay with HRU layer to show where they overlap
• [ ] compare results for given day

[mhines-usgs]

seems they have a daily data dump appearing here, which includes site metadata like lat/long i can use to map the data. https://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/ftpref/data/water/wcs/gis/data/sntl_data.csv they also have 'normals' for last 30 years https://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/ftpref/data/snow/snotel_normals/1971-2000/ can use sitenum param to also find this page and perhaps scrape if needed. they provide some web services as well. https://wcc.sc.egov.usda.gov/nwcc/site?sitenum=828 also 'report generator 2.0' https://wcc.sc.egov.usda.gov/reportGenerator/view/customGroupByMonthReport/daily/1189:AK:SNTL%7Cid=%22%22%7Cname/CurrentWY,0/WTEQ::value where the web address contains params that could be tweaked to scrape if needed

[mhines-usgs]

seems like it should be easy on a daily basis to be able to grab the snotel data from that csv link above.

the metadata explaining the columns is here https://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/ftpref/data/water/wcs/gis/data/sntl_data.readme

this simple bash command could be used daily to grab it and save it as a dated file. it can then be used in our own comparison tests if desired. curl https://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/ftpref/data/water/wcs/gis/data/sntl_data.csv --output "$(date '+%Y-%m-%d')"_snotel.csv

[mhines-usgs]

met with @jenniferRapp 8/18 and discussed moving this comparison forward along with some other possible inclusions in the report

• [ ] fix report URLs for beta and prod and move all test results into public s3 space
• [ ] create a snotel data comparison for sites that overlap our HRUs (what variable should we use for comparison with our pkwater_equiv (total water snowpack)? swe? (defined as "Current snow water equivalent (inches)")
• [ ] include 60 day % of normal graphic
• [ ] other graphics? drought.gov 7 day graphic
• [ ] soil moisture data comparisons, are there other datasets available to compare to that we can find?
• [ ] map out other individual variables?

[jenniferRapp]

iwaas_mapper_comparison_20210815.pptx Jacob's comparisons for examples.

[jenniferRapp]

https://weather.msfc.nasa.gov/sport/case_studies/lis_CONUS.html I found this experimental map from NOAA. I'm thinking we want soil moisture in 0-10 cm depth. I'll send it along to Jacob and see what he thinks These are not as nice as the GRACE based soil moisture maps that we might try to just plot against a map of our soil moisture maps.
https://nasagrace.unl.edu/data/20210816/GRACE_SFSM_20210816.png These are 7-day.

[mhines-usgs]

nice saving these for later megan - example soil moisture map request from the first link mentioned: https://weather.msfc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/basicLooper.pl?category=lis_CONUS&initialize=first&regex=vsm0-10percent_20210818

looks like you can just get the image that page displays along with a legend with this request: https://weather.msfc.nasa.gov/sport/dynamic/lis_CONUS//vsm0-10percent_20210818_00z_conus.gif

and it seems like you can manipulate the date and pretty easily get graphics, at least back for 90ish days? https://weather.msfc.nasa.gov/sport/dynamic/lis_CONUS//vsm0-10percent_20210818_00z_conus.gif https://weather.msfc.nasa.gov/sport/dynamic/lis_CONUS//vsm0-10percent_20210516_00z_conus.gif

Similar date manipulation can be done with the GRACE data, there are many products we could grab listed per date, https://nasagrace.unl.edu/data/20210816/, with data going back for many years, so we could potentially include both of these if Jacob liked them.

[jenniferRapp]

I heard back from Jacob about our plans. He likes the SnoTel comparisons and confirmed that the data in Concept Map is SWE. The comparison of depth first makes sense. convert inches to mm.

The general comparison of 60-day precip to the image of our concept map will give qualitative comparisons of what is publicly served by other agencies and our work.

For soils his preference would be to use the SCAN (soil climate analysis network) https://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/scan/ data. It looks like it is individual stations reporting out total soil moisture for a variety of depths. That will match the Concept Map outputs much better than SPoRT-LIS will. Or at least not the top 10 cm of soil.

"The parameter soil_moist_max is the maximum storage, in inches, of water in the soilzone of each HRU in PRMS. The somewhat apples-to-oranges comparison is that SPoRT-LIS is looking at the top 10cm of the soil profile, whereas PRMS does not define a soilzone thickness, it is a conceptual volume with a part that can have evaporation and transpiration (top) and a part that only can have transpiration (bottom). "

We could look at the GRACE and SPORT to see if they can provide a dataset that is comparable to the soil_moist_max in our PRMS.

Should we work on a 7-day total of all the variables for comparison with Drought.gov?

Jacob likes this but I would encourage you to work on the other three first and then circle back with me about this last one.