Snow surveying comes of age in the west

The Bureau of Agricultural Engineering’s coordination of snow surveying activity was transferred the Soil Conservation Service in 1939 along with several other operations of the bureau’s divisions of irrigation and drainage. The move linked the snow survey operations with an agency which worked directly with many of the main clients of snow survey--the irrigation farmers.This paper recounts the growth of water supply forecasting in the 1930’s and 1940’s with special emphasis on the snow survey network, publicity, concerns about the accuracy and improvement of forecasts, and uses of water supply forecasts including its value for predicting floods.