Design of a watershed snow fence system, and first-year snow accumulation

Inducing snow accumulation with fences in areas with insufficient natural barriers can materially increase total snow storage by reducing sublimative losses and by diverting snow that would be transported further downwind.This paper describes the approach used to design a snow fence treatment for an experimental watershed to test the feasibility of this form of snowpack management. A method is presented for estimating the total amount of snow available to a fence.After 9 years of pretreatment measurements, a 12-1/2 ft. fence 1300 ft. long was built on a 111-acre watershed. Peak snowpack water equivalent on the watershed the first winter after treatment was about 70% greater than predicted without the fence.