I am pleased to announce that two of the tools that ASARC has been working on over this spring and summer are now released to the public.

The first is Arfi, the Avalanche Research Forecasting Interface. It collects many items such as webcams, weather stations, and models into one map-driven interface for Canadian avalanche information. It is currently in Beta and will be for the season 2010-2011. Supported browsers are Firefox and Chrome.

The second is GSWarm, a GIS map based implementation of the warming model SWarm. You can see warming projected over real terrain with shading. Currently Rogers Pass is released, with other areas coming soon. Terrain overlays work in Firefox and Chrome.

Although they are currently being hosted on this site (thesnowpit.com) this may soon change. So, please use the links above which re-direct via www.ucalgary.ca/asarc as these are permanent links.

Enjoy. Feedback welcome.

In learning the science of snow, there happens to be lots of math involved. After all, mathematics is the language of physics, and physics is the radness by which we can start to describe some of how snow works.

But how math should be applied...what math should we learn...how we should learn it...all of these questions are complicated and unanswered. For those of you interested in math education, I've found two talks especially interesting.

First, a statement that statistics should not only play a larger role in math education, but be the pinnacle of it:

I find this quite interesting as (a) Dr. Benjamin is a professor at Harvey Mudd, (b) I went to Mudd, and (c) one of the things I wish I learned more of at Mudd was statistics, because I use them all the time in snow science. It reminds me of how much I love small schools, that ideas like this can crop up and become real in a very short time.

Speaking of making ideas real, another (longer, but worth it) video describes how having less information actually inspires people to go out and really figure things out:

Dan Meyer, the speaker, does a good job of not only describing why I think math is really cool ('the language of our intuition') but one of the reasons why I think snow science is cool -- i.e. that there is so much real, hands-on information that we don't know, that we can be inspired to find out.

It is always interesting reading avalanche-related news. Some of it is good -- a way to help get important information out to the public. And some of it, well....

I empathize with the media. However multidisciplinary avalanche science is, working in the media must demand general knowledge of many, many, many topics. But every so often, an article comes along with a phrasing that shows a lack of understanding of how avalanches work.

Most commonly, erroneous media assume that avalanche conditions are more long-term then they really are (they actually change by the day, or even hour) or are more dangerous than they really are (yes, people can ski safely in select places even when the danger is High). Here are two examples over the past month, meant for humour only, as I'm sure (and hope) someone out there is also chuckling over my writing:

• An example implying that avalanche hazard can be consistent across large geographic areas:
  
  Take care: Avalanche danger is 'considerable' on slopes statewide
  
  Although the content of the article does a nice job of discussing specific areas where the considerable rating is applied, the title implies that everywhere across Montana has the same rating.

• And my all-time favourite, from the BBC:
  
  Avalanche risk in Scotland raised by crystals
  
  The title probably says it all. It's actually a nice highlight for surface hoar, but the title always makes me say "as opposed to?"

These article titles simply caught my eye. Overall, the relationship between the source of avalanche information and the media is improving dramatically, and this is much to the media's credit. It is good to see that the articles above are the wost of it.

And, if you are looking for Canadian media information straight from the source, try the Canadian Avalanche Centre's Media Page, or, better yet, their Avalanche Bulletins.