SEA-POL radar completes winter deployment in Steamboat Springs, CO

(2025-04-14) -- written by Brenda Dolan

Snow is an important part of the water cycle in the west. The recent NSF-sponsored field campaign Snow Sensitivity to Clouds in a Mountain Environment (S2noCliME) collected data during the 2024-2025 winter season around Steamboat Springs, CO to better understand winter cloud and precipitation processes in an orographic environment. Seven members of the Bell group including Instrument PI Brenda Dolan and Co-PI Michael Bell, Research Scientist Jen DeHart, graduate students Delián Colón-Burgos, Lauren Beard, Nick Mesa, and Meghan Stell. Other members of the Atmospheric Science Department and CIRA (Olivia Lee, Anastasia Tomanek, Marie McGraw, and James Larson) helped to keep the radar running and clear of snow over the 16 week season with engineering support from Professor V. Chandraskar and Radar Engineer Jim George in the ECE Department.

As part of the project, the NSF Community Instrument Facility (CIF) CSU SEA-POL radar collected over 101 days of data from it’s perch near the Yampa Valley Airport in Hayden, CO. While it was a typical year for snowfall (~300” at the Steamboat Ski Resort), including bitterly cold temperatures in January reaching almost -30 Fº, several warm spells throughout the season melted some of the snowpack. As part of the SEA-POL deployment, three undergraduate students were selected to participate in the Practical Learning for University Students (PLUS) program. Sophomores Katiria Colon-Rivera and Vilmaliz Hernandez-Mateo from the University of Puerto Rico, who had never seen snow before, and senior Maya Hartley from the University of Hawaii, spent two weeks in the field launching radio sondes, assisting the team with forecasting, and learning about snow microphysics and polarimetric radar.