Snow Hardness Profiles: The Snow Scope vs. Manual Hand Hardness
The following examples all show a Scope profile overlaid with a manual hand hardness profile collected at the same time and location. In each case, the Snow Scope measures all the critical layers and interfaces that a manual profile picks up, with even more resolution, repeatability, and detail.
For the profiles below with just 1 plot, the yellow shows a Scope profile, while the blue line shows a manual hand hardness profile.
Learn more about how to interpret Snow Scope Profiles here.
Selkirks, British Columbia 12/27/21
This deep December snowpack in interior British Columbia showed a generally right side up snowpack with one major weakness — a buried rain crust from Dec 1. The Snow Scope profile clearly shows this buried crust with weak faceted snow directly above and below it. This layer was remarkably consistent across aspect and elevation in this area, and we found it on almost all of our Snow Scope profiles in the general area. Check out our blog post on this for more info on tracking spatial variability.
Alta, UT 11/04/2021
This early season shallow snowpack shows a surface crust and a shallow buried crust sandwiching some soft snow, along with a few deeper suncrusts. Note how the Snow Scope picked up a layer of weak faceting snow directly under the major crust about 25cm from the surface. This layer was difficult to discern in a hand hardness profile, but definitely present, and likely the most reactive layer.
manual hand hardness profile
Scope Profile
Teton Pass, WY 12/17/2020
This SE Aspect shows a 25cm new snow layer on top of a variety of harder suncrusts and weaker facet layers. The hard layer at the bottom shown in the Scope Profile (ignored in the manual hand hardness) is ice formations and the ground.
Little Cottonwood Canyon, UT 12/21/2020
This early season shallow snowpack shows a fairly simple snowpack structure on a N aspect. New snow forming a cohesive slab overlying a layer of weak facets with ice layers at the ground.
Alta, UT 4/18/2021
The two profiles of this late season snowpack are actually the same Scope Profile, shown at 2 different “smoothness” levels. This filter smooths out minor fluctuations in hardness, while preserving major changes. In either view, the Scope profile matches the major layers in the hand hardness profile very well.
Big Cottonwood Canyon, UT 2/26/2021
This mid winter Wasatch snowpack shows a deepening and strengthening snowpack, yet reveals that the bottom of the pack is still weak (20/21 in the Wasatch had an active persistent weak layer issue from early season faceting up until about this point in the season). The Snow Scope picks up multiple upper pack crusts, a mid pack weak layer, and generally weakening lower pack well.
