[pct-l] Re: Snow questions

[kdrury at indwes.edu (Keith Drury)]

Eric your site supplies all the data thanks!

I'll meet most of you Northbounders in the desert where I'll be southbound
in the month of May.  But I'll be northbound ahead of the pack in the High
Sierras.  Three of us plan on entering the high sierras at Cottonwood Pass
June 18 or 19th and going as far as we can and to break a trail.  I've done
the section several times so at least I remember the general route.  If we
make it over Forrester/Ski Mountaineer and the next few passes we'll go out
to Bishop and send word back to KM.  Of course by then it would be near the
June 25th anyway.

Second Wind AKA "Coach"



Keith Drury
Indiana Wesleyan University



-----Original Message-----
From: pct-l-bounces@mailman.backcountry.net
[mailto:pct-l-bounces@mailman.backcountry.net]On Behalf Of Eric Lehman
Sent: Tuesday, April 12, 2005 2:11 PM
To: pct-l@mailman.backcountry.net
Subject: [pct-l] Re: Snow questions


Hi,

I'm sure you've looked at the excellent PCT post-holer site.  For another
perspective, you can look at my site:

    http://theory.lcs.mit.edu/~e_lehman/uty.html

Essentially, I've taken this year's snow record up to today and pasted on
melt records from this day forward from 35 previous years.  I update daily
and the range of uncertainty-- while still large-- is slowly dropping.
Of course, something completely unprecedented *could* happen; the graph
only shows you the range of things that *have* happened.

At the extremes, a once-in-a-decade fast melt could leave us only slightly
above normal snow levels.  On the other hand, the melt patterns in about
15% of years would put us FIVE WEEKS behind schdule.  Overall, it looks to
me like we'll be 1-3 weeks behind normal.  So this suggests that June 27th
is a reasonable date for a rough plan.

/Eric

P.S.  Someone suggested I compute a mean and std. dev. for the day when
all snow is gone.  I liked this idea a lot, but got stuck because we
haven't had to melt off this much snow most years.  So a lot of the curves
don't drop all the way to zero.  I couldn't think of a good way to cope
with that, so I've just left the graph for "eyeballing".

> Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2005 11:51:14 -0400
> From: medusaj@aol.com
> Subject: [pct-l] Snow questions
>
> So.  In planning an itinerary to leave with our support person, snow
> becomes a factor.  If my calculations are correct, actual "Ray Day" is
> not June 15 this year, but June 27 (June 1 + [90.1/3.5]). [...]
>
> My questions are: [...]
>
> 2.  How realistic are Ray's calculations?  Would you recommend we use
> the June 27 date as our estimated Kennedy Meadows departure date?  Or
> June 15?  July 15?  August 31?
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