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Show Snow Course Measurements Indicate Above Average Moisture Conditions The proverbial saying "April Showers will bring May Flowers," Flow-ers," will become a reality In southern Utah If existing water content on water courses can be used as a measuring stick According to the Iron County Soil Conservation District water outlook on the courses are higher high-er now, for a comparable time of year, than they have been for a number of years. j Coures at Cedar Breaks, Mid. way and Webster's Flat show water content averaging nearly eight Inches higher than since 1954. . Measurements taken give an accurate picture, too. Tuesday when the water courses were measured. Gilbert Hansen, area soils specialist, took the measurements. meas-urements. The process, although not complicated, is thorough. For instance at Cedar Breaks where snow depth was measured at 68.1 inches and water content was re. corded at 26.6 inches, a total of 20 tests were made and an average av-erage taken to compute the figures. fig-ures. A hollow aluminum tube is used to determine both depth and water content The tube is forced through the snow pack toi the group level at each check point which gives the snow depth. Then the core that is acquired ac-quired in the tube is weighed on a calibrator to .scale to determine deter-mine the water content. This figure fig-ure minus the weight of the tube is taken on all 20 points, at 50 foot intervals and the aver-age aver-age snow depth and average weight on the scale is computed comput-ed to determine the water content. con-tent. At Midway, the course is measured meas-ured at 50 foot intervals, but only on-ly 12 times and at Webster's Flat a total of 19 testd are taken at 100 foot Intervals. The Soil Conservation Service snowmobile Is used to obtain access to the various snow courses. Following is a breakdown of the three course in Cedar Canyon: Can-yon: Cedar Breaks. Snow 68.1, ws. ter 26.6. 1956, snow 43, water 17.3. and 1955, water 12.9, and 1954, water 18.5. Midway. Snow 675, water 26.3; 1956, snow 42, water 17.4; 1955, water 12.9, 1954, water 18.5. Webster Flat, Snow 40.3, water wa-ter 17,6; 1956, snow 8, water 3.3; 1955, water 7.0; 1954, water 7.0. At Urle Flat there was no measurable snow, which has been the case each year. |
