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Comment by superplussed | Hacker News Reader

I hadn't heard that there has been a decline in snowfall, it's pretty stark in the Pacific West:

https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica...

I live in Upstate NY. We get snowfall, but after the storm blows out, it gets warm. This January/February, I cleared my roof of snow wearing shorts, and the temp was around 65-70.

I don't totally understand the figure. What is determining the number of data points taken? It looks like the density of readings in the NW is much higher than in the NE.

I would assume that most of the snowfall data comes from ski resorts, and there are a lot more of those in the west than in the east.

Snowfall data at ski resorts isn't reliable because they make snow, and the incentive is to lie toward favorable amounts for marketing purposes. In Colorado a few years ago a number of resorts were caught blatantly fabricating snowfall amounts and then they combated this with variations on snow stake cams published on their web site.

Anyway, there are quite a few NOAA SNOTEL sites all over that have reliable data and for sure snow pack is on a decline, and there's also USDA NRCS who use that data and publish agricultural specific interpretations of it. Further, due to budget constraints, some of these data may stop being tracked and produced altogether.

https://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/ftpref/gis/images/co_swepctnor...

https://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/ftpref/gis/images/mt_swepctnor...

Note the notice under the date.

By that data Vermont has slightly increased rates of snowfall over the last 70 years. This paper also references studies that predict Vermont will see an increase of snow over the next few decades as well: https://www.northeastern.edu/climatereview/?p=282

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