2023 Flights and Forecasts
It is now mid-April and ASO flight season is well underway. ASO Inc. has conducted 6 complete snow surveys and have begun delivering data products for those basins. You can access the ASO snow survey data and other associated reports through the ASO Inc. data portal here: https://data.airbornesnowobservatories.com/ (Free account required).
2024 Flight Updates
ASO Inc. has been busy and many snow surveys have been conducted. The table below shows the flights that have been conducted and the approximate timing of the remaining snow surveys. The map shows all the basins that will receive snow surveys this year.
ASO Snow Surveys completed and pending as of 4/21/2024
Basins with planned snow surveys in 2023
It is also worth a reminder of the data products that are included with each snow survey including:
3m gridded snow depth raster
50m gridded snow water equivalent (SWE) raster
Detailed report on snow water volume by elevation and aspect
iSnobal model results showing details of local snowpack dynamics developed by M3Works
WRF-Hydro streamflow forecasts produced by NCAR
These data are all produced within a few days of each flight, so if you haven’t seen these results for your basin, please reach out.
April Stakeholder meeting
The CASM workgroup just had our April Stakeholder meeting. The meeting was recorded and can be found here on the CASM YouTube channel.
A few highlights from this meeting include:
Overview of key findings from flights including comparisons to 2019
Forecast improvement discussions from WRF-Hydro and CBRFC
Funding opportunities for 2024
2024 Funding
Even though we are midway through flight season in 2023, it is important to start considering CASM in your budgets for 2024 and beyond. This program is growing quickly thanks, in large part, to the support from local stakeholders. There are several opportunities for state and federal funding of CASM, but local match will likely remain a large part of our budget going forward. Since many local budget cycles are approaching, please consider partial funding match for ASO flights for the years to come.
Thanks for your support and engagement,
The CASM Team
