Bringing federal coordination to snow surveys: An historical survey

Drought in the 1930's prompted western interests to push for legislation to authorize federal coordination of snow surveys. Although small in number, the core of snow survey supervisors in the Bureau of Agricultural Engineering, and later in the Soil Conservation Service, created a regional network by eliciting cooperation from other federal and state agencies that managed land in the West and from conservation districts. The paper will discuss the history of important issues that have revolved around federal coordination of snow surveys. Some of those issues are the role of research in snow survey operations, development and adoption of new technologies such as oversnow vehicles and SNOTEL, organizational arrangements and location of snow survey operations in the Soil Conservation Service, and the expanded uses of snow survey information. Sources for the paper are records of the Bureau of Agricultural Engineering and the Soil Conservation Service in the National Archives, publications, and oral history interviews.