High-tech planes gather crucial snowpack data to help SRP manage Valley water supply

PHOENIX — Salt River Project has teamed up with Arizona State University and Airborne Snow Observatories to measure the snowpack in the Salt River Basin.

The data gathered provides valuable information for SRP as it manages the water it delivers to more than 2 million Valley residents.

California-based Airborne Snow Observatories, or ASO, uses its aircraft fleet to collect accurate and reliable measurements of snow-water equivalent and forecast snowmelt runoff.

ASU graduate students then crunch the numbers that SRP uses in its planning.

How ASO aircraft fleet measures snowpack from 23,000 feet in air

ASO conducted a series of flights last week over Mount Baldy, which is near Greer in eastern Arizona. The planes use technology developed as part of a NASA program.

Kat Bormann, ASO lead scientist, recently told KTAR News 92.3 FM how the process works.

“We have a bunch of instrumentation on board,” she explained. “We have a hole in the bottom of the plane. We look down with those instruments to the snowpack and we scan it. And we figure out how much water is in the snowpack and how bright it is, which tells us how quickly it’s going to melt.”

ASO’s planes are outfitted with spectrometer and lidar technology. Bormann described the lidar as two laser pointers that shoot out the bottom of the plane from 23,000 feet in the air and touch the snowpack.

“We can shoot all the way down, touch the snowpack every 10 feet, have that signal return back to the plane,” she said. “And we collect how long that takes and that tells us how deep the snowpack is.”

One thing detected is the presence of dust or black carbon in the snow. It’s a crucial piece of information in determining how much water the snowpack will produce because the brown-colored snow absorbs more sunlight and melts faster.

After touching every part of the snowpack, ASO then feeds that data to ASU as quickly as possible.

“We take the data out, which is a terabyte of data each time we fly. We send that up to the cloud and then we process that in 72 hours,” Bormann said.

What does ASU do with snowpack measurements?

ASU graduate students will use the data to figure out how much water will come into the Salt River Basin.

“ASU students are putting together a hydrological model that’s going to use the snow data to improve the forecast of water into the reservoir system,” ASU hydrology professor Enrique Vivoni told KTAR News.

SRP uses the forecast to make decisions about how it handles its water supply.
The project has a price tag of $1.2 million, with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation providing $1 million in funding and ASU and SRP kicking in the rest.

“SRP depends on the winter season to fill its reservoirs,” Vivoni said. “So, the amount of snow has to do with the amount of water in the reservoirs that then we consume in the summertime.”

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