Thursday, May 4, 2017

Snow

The Northern Icefield surface has received badly-needed snow accumulation since mid-February, rising 20-25 cm to approximately mid-October 2016 height. In hindsight, it appears that a minimum height occurred on 18 February, just prior to the photographs posted in the entry below. An early March snowfall event of 15-20 cm was followed by a month of predominantly ablation. A mid-April event then brought new snow, followed by 5-6 days of accumulation up until yesterday and adding 13-14 cm more accumulation. Typically the long rains continue through May, which could partially mitigate impacts of the short rain failure.