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.

It is good to remember the wealth of ways to measure the changing nature of snow. We all think of the classic weather station, but there are many, many more.

Take Jessica Lundquist, from the University of Washington, who throws temperature-sensor-embedded tennis balls into hard to reach areas for 11 months of logging at a time.

Or Nicholas Kinar from the University of Saskatchewan, who uses compressive sound wave profiles to measure the SWE, or water content, of a snowpack.

Finally, moving up in the technology spectrum, laser imaging of terrain over time can help answer questions ranging from entrainment in avalanches to the change in glacier thickness over time, as the University of Zurich is using it for.

A little creativity goes a long way.

Because it Deserves Re-Posting

It is about that time, when we aren't quite practicing with beacons yet, but the weather is getting cooler and some of us might be feeling sheepish about leaving the batteries in our transceivers all summer.

And any time is a good time to read about how these pieces of technology, at times so useful, can at other times be fuzzy and unpredictable.

Jonathan at Wildsnow.com takes a clear and qualitative approach to testing avalanche transceivers around pieces of equipment we may have around our person without even thinking: iPods, radios, and phones. An excerpt:

...Then I repeated the testing with the FRS/GMRS radio and the cell phone making a call. Noticeable interference occurred in some, but not all models, with ghosting, distracting noise, incorrect directional indicators, and other problems.

Next, I added an iPod to the mix of devices: now the interference was much worse, and occurred in all beacon models. My conclusion: never tour in potential avalanche terrain with an iPod! The potential to have the iPod still on (yet not noticed) during a search could cause serious problems with any avalanche beacon....

He continues on, testing smartphones, commenting on range testing and a previous New York Times review, and much more. Thank you for a great read.