Plymouth State University researchers receive grant to study snowpack data

Snow covers Mount Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2013 as seen from Bartlett, N.H.

Snow covers Mount Washington, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2013 as seen from Bartlett, N.H. Jim Cole/AP photo, file

By CLAIRE SULLIVAN

New Hampshire Bulletin

Published: 01-02-2025 8:52 AM

Researchers at Plymouth State University will use a two-year, $192,000 federal grant to look at almost a century of snowpack data in the Northeast and create the first “Snow Drought Index” in the nation.

The index “will look at measurements of depth and snow water equivalent in the Northeast and rank them by severity of deviation from a climatological baseline,” the university said in a press release. The project – scheduled to be done by April 2026 – aims to better understand climate change in New England.

The grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will allow researchers to analyze snowpack depth and “the amount of water in the snowpack … to produce standardized climate data” that can be used for modeling and forecasts by NOAA, the National Weather Service, and others, Eric Kelsey, a PSU research associate professor, said in the release.

“Various organizations have been measuring the region’s snowpack since the 1930s,” Kelsey said in a statement, “but until now we have never had an observational baseline for a historical perspective of present-day snowpack conditions, an understanding of how the seasonal snowpack has evolved with climate change, nor developed a model for assessing snow drought conditions.”

New Hampshire has been no stranger to water-related disasters, the university noted, pointing to floods in the northern part of the state in December 2023 that had an acute impact on infrastructure and properties. 

“The state of the winter snowpack – critical to the economy and lifestyles of northern New England – plays a significant role in the probability that these disasters will occur,” the release said.

PSU will work with groups including the NWS and Cornell University’s Northeast Regional Climate Center, the university said. 

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