The National Water and Climate Center in Portland, OR, the technical lead for the Snow Survey and Water Supply Forecasting Program, the NRCS national Soil Climate Analysis Network (SCAN), and a large number of water and climate activities. These include providing data for conservation, tools for assessing water supplies and climate, and resources for addressing questions on local and regional conditions, drought and climate trends. Our Center also serves as a resource and co-director for the USDA Pacific Northwest Climate Hub.
In the western U.S., most of the annual streamflow that provides water supplies arrives as spring and summer melt from mountain snowpack. Our Program provides the only regional direct measurement of this resource through our manual snow courses and automated SNOTEL network. If you peruse the photos in our online gallery, you can see how beautiful, difficult and exciting our work can be and the fantastic, yet extreme, locations where we collect these data.
The data and our water supply forecasts are used by agricultural producers, water managers, hydroelectric power generators, recreationists, fish and wildlife managers, and climate researchers, to name just a few. The NRCS staff who work at the National Water and Climate Center and throughout the Snow Survey and Water Supply Forecasting Program are dedicated to providing the most current, accurate, and accessible data and information possible to the public.
About Snow Surveys
