This dataset contains precipitation measurements from an OTT PARticle SIze and VELocity (PARSIVEL) disdrometer which was installed at the Atwater snow study plot in the town of Alta, Utah, USA (40.591269°N; 111.637789°W; 2682 m MSL) during the cool seasons ending 2023 through 2024.
This is data from a Micro Rain Radar (MRR) that was deployed at Alta, UT from 2022–2024. The MRR is a vertically pointing Doppler radar that operates at a frequency of 24 GHz (K-band). The radar collects time series of equivalent reflectivity, Doppler velocity, and Doppler velocity spectrum width, all in 1-dimension (the vertical).
This data set contains 12-hour manual new snow and liquid precipitation equivalent (LPE) observations collected at the Alta-Collins (CLN) snow-study plot during the 2023/2024 cool season (October 1–April 30). CLN is located mid-mountain at Alta Ski Area in the Wasatch Range of northern Utah (approximately 111.63889W, 40.57607N) at an elevation of 2945 m.
Detailed ground-based observations of snow are scarce in remote regions such as the Arctic. Here, Multi-Angle Snowflake Camera (MASC) measurements of over 55,000 solid hydrometeors — obtained during a two-year period from August 2016 to August 2018 at Oliktok Point, Alaska — are analyzed and compared to similar measurements from an earlier experiment at Alta, Utah. In general, distributions of hydrometeor fall speed, fall orientation, aspect ratio, flatness, and complexity (i.e., riming degree) were observed to be very similar between the two locations, except that Arctic hydrometeors tended to be smaller. In total, the slope parameter defining a negative exponential of the size distribution was approximately 50% steeper in the Arctic as at Alta. 66% of particles were observed to be rimed or moderately rimed, with some suggestion that riming is favored by weak boundary layer stability. On average, the fall speed of rimed particles was not notably different from aggregates. However, graupel density and fall speed increase as cloud temperatures approach the melting point.
