RE: It's Snowing!!!

["Hawes,Timothy Edward \(GEG\)" <haweste@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I was wondering just the same thing this morning, it's maybe the only
part of a weather station you can't automate, or can you ?

Webcam pointing at a graduated ruler ? (like the ones they use for
surveying the road or identifying the size of things in evidence
photographs)
Or point it at a series of rulers where each one is one inch (or
whatever) taller than the last. When you can see the ruler the snow is
deeper than "X".

With some fancy image recognition software I bet someone could work out
which rulers were covered and therefore how deep the snow was.

Avoiding drifting, I think, is a question of placement of the
"sensors"
coupled with using narrow cross section rulers.

HTH,

Tim H.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Stuart Grimshaw  Sent: 22 February 2005 11:39
>
> I'm sitting here in the office, watching the snow, looking
> accross the valley I can see the hills got more and more
> covered in snow. The problem is I live up on those hills, and
> I could do with knowing just how deep the snow is.
>
> I've considered using a webcam, but it's a bit tricky to tell
> the depth of snow.
>
> I don't suppose anyone does this already do they?
>
> Perhaps a moisture sensor would detect the rain/snow in
> conjunction with a temp. sensor outdoors would tell you if it
> actually was snowing or raining, but wouldn't give you any
> idea of depth.
>
> Could you mount a sensor vertically, and as the snow mounted
> up the resistance would drop? How would you avoid detecting a
> drift as a massive amount of snow?
>
> You couldn't use a normal rain guage either, unless you had a
> heater element to melt the snow.
>
> --
> -S
> http://www.makepovertyhistory.org/
>
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