17 April 2012 Moving Snow!

Today was our first full day of digging with everybody here. We left the cabin at 7:00 this morning and returned around 5:00 in the afternoon. This week is for digging out the warming sides of the snow fences. We had eight people out there today doing not much than digging! And after all of that work we have now cleared three out of the six fence areas. So about half done for full day and part of another.

We are digging the snow on the warming side just down to where the natural snow depth is on the control side. Now that we have had the fence do its job during the winter by causing the snow to pile up on the warming side, it is time to remove the extra snow that we caused to be there, so that both sides of the fence are equal. This will help us control the experiment by evening out the amount to both sides of melt that will supply water during the summer. In this way we received the warming affect from the deeper snow, and now we must get back to treating each side even for the rest of the year.

Our extra two folks today are Brian and Jamie. They work for the forest service in Fairbanks out of the University of Alaska and are great guys. They also know who to shovel snow really well! They brought their two snowmobiles to help us move equipment and people out to the study site. This is the second season I have been able to work with them and its always a good time. We will continue tomorrow with the shoveling with both of them helping us and then they will return to Fairbanks tomorrow evening.