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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, GPSBabel is a great little free program that lets you download GPS tracks on Linux without installing the Garmin Mapsource program. It also runs on Windows. In addition, it lets you translate from and to various GPS formats.

To download a track from your garmin GPS on Windows, the format is usually:

> gpsbabel -t -i garmin -o gpx -f usb: -F outputfile.gpx

or, for Linux users with a GPS interface kernel module:

> gpsbabel -t -i garmin -o gpx -f /dev/ttyUSB0 -F outputfile.gpx

The EEE comes with a GPS interface kernel module. The problem is that it doesn't really work well (garmin_usb) and instead you want to map it to /dev. Rather, I installed GPSBabel on my eeeXUbuntu SD card system (apt-get install gpsbabel) and it maps my Garmin GPS just fine.

Once you have your outfile.gpx, it probably has all of the tracks rather than just the one you want. To get a gpx file containing only a specific track by name or title, do:

> gpsbabel -t -i gpx -f outputfile.gpx -x track,name="Exact Name" -o gpx -F singletrack_output.gpx


The 'official' called-in notification for the couple who did not return from their skiing trip apparently occurred on Feb 23; they were found February 24. From that perspective, the search took a perfectly reasonable amount of time.

Things get sticky, however, when one considers that they had been missing since February 15. In addition, there were multiple sightings of SOS messages in the snow which were spotted and reported, including to the RCMP. However, no one (including the RCMP) apparently took any action. Thus, the surviving member of the lost couple has begun a lawsuit against the Golden and District Search and Rescue Association, among others, which includes volunteers.

Having volunteered on a SAR team in the States, and just starting to get involved in one up here, I find this whole thing very interesting. In the States, the order goes like this:

(1) Someone calls in a missing person to the police
(2) The police call the SAR team with the needed skills or jurisdiction
(3) The search commences

Even if one of our team members saw something that might warrant a search (say, an SOS) he/she would still report it to the police. The police would then call out the necessary resources. Sometimes, sticky situations like this do arise, but if any one of the volunteer members act without an official call out from law enforcement, it is clear that the person is acting independently and is possibly personally liable. Thus, due to liability fear, a good rule of thumb to remember in the States is:

If no one calls you in missing, no one will search for you.

Thus, it is a good idea to have a contact to call you in! In addition, there are many legal protective barriers in the States available to the rescuer. These include the Good Samaritan Law (for acting in good faith and without formal training) and the Volunteer Protection Act (for acting without pay and with formal training). However, one must also realize that the States has NASAR, a formal training program for individual rescuers, and the MRA, one of many formal certification programs for rescue teams.

Thus, one might sue a certain team, but not the individuals on that team. The team may be disbanded, but the members will usually be protected under the Volunteer Protection Act. Or, (or maybe in addition) they often carry personal liability insurance.

A similar situation can sometimes be found in for-profit organizations. For example, the lawsuit from a 2005 in-bounds avalanche in Mount Charleston, Nevada closed the resort for more than a month, and just recently finished in settlement. But it did not target the patrollers individually.

Apparently not so here in Canada. From CBC News:

The big message is, that there does appear to be a situation in the Canadian legal system that will allow a subject to sue societies for something that happens operationally, so we better have insurance, we better be covered, because if we are not, it can all affect us personally

Yikes! Teams are already reacting to this terrifying realization. Many volunteer teams in the area have already shut down, with extreme examples such as the Fernie search and rescue board resigning, and Golden's team removing all available equipment for response and technical rescues. And the stagnation has moved beyond the backcountry; BC highway response teams have drawn back their responses because of liability fears.

I personally find it exceptionally sad that a lawsuit -- which essentially is trying to sue for lack of response -- is showing liability issues which will create an even worse lack of response. Something needs to be done.

Since the 50k data in Canada is free (vector topographic data and DEMs), the tutorials focus on using that data in GRASS. Feedback welcome. Enjoy.