Rain–Snow Transition Elevation from Wireless Sensor Network in the American and Feather River Basins

Snowpack in the Sierra Nevada is important storage of winter precipitation, which provides snowmelt to support California’s water supply during dry seasons. In mountainous areas, snow cover shows large temporal and spatial variability and sensitive to changes in precipitation (rainfall or snowfall) and temperature. To determine the phase of precipitation, which is essential information in runoff forecasting and water resources management, one method is to derive the rain-snow transition elevations during storm events. This study evaluates a ground-based method to obtain rain-snow transition elevation with measurements from strategically designed Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) in the American River and Feather River basins (Figure 1).