Snow pillow

A snow pillow is a device for measuring snow

Snow

Snow is a form of precipitation within the Earth's atmosphere in the form of crystalline water ice, consisting of a multitude of snowflakes that fall from clouds. Since snow is composed of small ice particles, it is a granular material. It has an open and therefore soft structure, unless packed by...

pack, especially for automated reporting stations such as SNOTEL

SNOTEL

thumb|300px|right|Data from a SNOTEL site in [[Elko County, Nevada]]SNOTEL is an automated system of snowpack and related climate sensors operated by the Natural Resources Conservation Service of the United States Department of Agriculture in the Western United States.There are over 600 SNOTEL ...

.

The snow pillow measures the water equivalent of the snow pack based on hydrostatic pressure created by overlying snow. Any discrepancy due to bridging is minimized by the large dimension of the pillow, typically 3 metres (118.1 in) square.

Another application for snow pillows is to estimate the snow weight on a roof to warn of potential for roof collapse.

Snow pillows were developed in the early 1960s.

Set-up

Large dimensions (e.g. size 3 x 3m) of the pillow prevent any bridging that might occur from having an effect on the measurement readings. For snow pressure measurement on roofs is the use of a smaller snow pillow (e.g. 1.x1.m) the better choice, because of the weight of the filling of the snow pillow.

Manufacturer

Company Sommer - http://www.sommer.at/en/home.html
Watersaver Company - http://www.watersaver.com

Examples

• Snow pillow installed in Fjordland, New Zealand