Snow Monitoring

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The Importance of Snow

It takes snow in the Sierra Madre Mountains, Medicine Bow Mountains and the Laramie Mountains to supply Cheyenne with water. For this reason, Cheyenne tracks how much snow is in these mountains throughout the winter using snow telemetry (SNOTEL) sites.

Snow telemetry sites, or SNOTEL, are specialized, automated weather stations that track snow-pack, the amount of moisture in the snow, temperatures, wind and other weather conditions. The BOPU uses the information from these sites to estimate how much water Cheyenne will be able to collect in reservoirs.

The BOPU funds three (3) SNOTEL sites, one in each of the drainages important to Cheyenne's water system.