Title: Manual Snow Obs Author(s): University of Utah/SUNYA Albany Snow Team For information contact Jim Steenburgh Department of Atmospheric Sciences University of Utah 135 South 1460 East Room 819 Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0110 801-581-8727 jim.steenburgh@utah.edu Dataset Overview: Manual snow obs taken at the North Redfield Observing Site (43.62445 N 75.8783 W), Sandy Creek Observing Site (43.6402 N 76.09715 W), and St. Joes Cemetery (43.65310 N 75.89902) during the Dec 2013 and Jan 2014 OWLeS field program (lat/lons not necessarily precise but within 100-200 m of actual observing location). Data at St. Joes Cemetery only collected during IOP2 afterwhich it was determined that the site suffered from too much tree intercept and wasn't representative. Instrument Description: Snow measurements were made on 2 ft x 2 ft square white snowboards with a vertical wooden ruler in the middle or back of board (photos of boards available in pdf-formatted field notes discussed below). Metric rulers with ticks every 1 mm were used to measure snow depth (typically to the nearest 1 or 0.5 cm) at multiple locations on the board and determine representativeness or unevenness. A Snowmetrics coring tube and scale were used to sample the snow and determine snow water equivalent (SWE) typically to the nearest 1 or 0.5 mm. Data Collection and Processing: Snowboards were placed in an area that was typically wind sheltered, although there were events where strong winds may have impacted measurements as noted in spreadsheets and notes. Snow depth and SWE on "interval" boards was typically measured and recorded every 6 hours at synoptic times (i.e., 0000, 0600, 1200, 1800 UTC), afterwhich the boards were wiped and repositioned. Exceptions are as follows and are noted in the data files: 1. Snow depth was occasionally measured and recorded without wiping the board at intermediate times of interest. 2. Snow depth was sometimes measured and recorded with the board wiped for a period of < 6 hours if the snowfall or IOP ended. 3. Snow depth was sometimes measured and recorded for a period of > 6 hours if we could not travel safely to the observing site. Because of snow sticking or scouring around the vertical ruler in the middle of the board, depth was typically determined by also measuring multiple locations on the board with a hand-held ruler. Situations where there was significant variability in depth are noted in the data files. Cores for SWE were taken in a representative spot on the board. Typically this was done twice with any significant departures between the two samples noted in the data files. At Sandy Creek and North Redfield, two different boards were used for interval measurements. interval-auto is a board on which automated measurements were also collected by an ultrasonic snow depth sensor. interval-manual is a board on which only manual observations were taken. The interval-manual-deep or deep woods board at North Redfield is a board placed in an extremely wind protected site back in a forested area that we began to use late in the field program when snow had beaten down brush around our snow study station, increasing wind exposure. Snow depth and SWE on "daily" boards was measured and recorded every 24 hours typically at 1200 UTC. In some situations as noted in the data files this was done for periods of less than 24 hours if the snowfall or IOP ended or for situations of more than 24 hours if we could not travel safely to the observing site. Data Format: Data files are available as nonproprietary htm and proprietary excel (xlsx) format. Photos and notes available as pdf files. Units, beginning and end of sampling intervals, etc., are included as headers or columns in each file. Comments on data quality included in data files and note files. Data and note files organized by IOPs. Note that data was not collected during all IOPs. Files are housed in directories for each site (e.g., north-redfield). Within each of these directories are files named "manualsnowobs--.htm" (data file in htm), "manualsnowobs--.xlsx" (data file in xlsx), and manualsnowobsnotes--.pdf" (field notes in pdf, including photos). Data Remarks: See field notes files in pdf format.