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COOP Station Snow Data

The snowdepth information listed by state is taken by volunteers in the National Weather Service (NWS) Cooperative Observer Program (COOP). More than 11,000 NWS-trained volunteers take observations on farms, in urban and suburban areas, National Parks, seashores, and mountaintops.

The COOP was formally created in 1890 under the Organic Act. Its mission is two-fold:

1) To provide observational meteorological data, usually consisting of daily maximum and minimum temperatures, snowfall, and 24-hour precipitation totals, required to define the climate of the United States and to help measure long-term climate changes

2) To provide observational meteorological data in near real-time to support forecast, warning and other public service programs of the NWS.

For more detailed information about real-time and historical snowfall measurements from the COOP network, visit the National Climatic Data Center Web site. For a list of station locations, click here.

Missing data: Our current COOP city file is missing over 250 stations, so not all COOP snow reports are posted. We expect to get an updated city file from the National Climatic Data Center in March 2004. Additionally, we are not reporting snow information from major airports, which arrive in a different format than the COOP data. We hope to add the major airport data later this year.

Snow Imagery

The snowdepth images are taken from a dataset prepared by the United States Air Force (USAF). The data is compiled from a variety of surface and satellite-based measurements for the Northern Hemisphere. The data is updated once per day at about 7pm EST. The data has problems in many areas. In particular, it does not do well in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

SNOTEL data

Snow data for over 600 locations in the Western U.S. mountains is available from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's SNOTEL network. These stations report snow depth, but not snowfall amount. For more detailed information about real-time and historical snowfall measurements from the SNOTEL network, visit the U.S. Department of Agriculture Web site. For a list of SNOTEL station locations, click here.