Snow detectives are in the Rocky Mountains to solve a mystery: Where’s all the snow going?
[Eli] Schwat and his research partner, Danny Hogan, are neither arctic explorers nor stormtroopers. They’re more like detectives. The duo treks out to this site each day to help answer a mystery: How much snow evaporates into the air before it has a chance to melt? Every winter, high-altitude snow melts and fills streams, rivers and reservoirs all around the Rocky Mountains. Some years, there’s a big gap between the amount of snow and the amount of water that ends up in the places where people measure and collect it. Scientists and water managers have limited data on why that happens. The disparity between snowpack and runoff has far-reaching implications for tens of millions of people who draw water from the Colorado River.
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