California Department of Water Resources
10/22/2025 | News release | Distributed by Public on 10/22/2025 12:07
Photo Essay: Improving Snowpack Data, the Old-Fashioned Way
Photo Essay: Improving Snowpack Data, the Old-Fashioned Way
Published: October 22, 2025
A Kennedy Meadows' packer leads the California Department of Water Resources' Division of Flood Management, and GEI Environmental and Architectural Historian out after renovating a dilapidated snow pillow weather station with a new Hinge Fold Tilt-Pole which will work with the Horse Meadow snow pillow station to transmit snowpack data to the statewide monitoring network. Photo taken October 10, 2025.
DWR's Division of Flood Operations, the California Conservation Corps, and GEI Environmental Consultants embarked on a five day, 38-mile roundtrip mission to renovate an old snow pillow station in the Emigrant Wilderness of the Stanislaus National Forest. The remote location in a designated wilderness area required a team to access the site through primitive means on horseback and use mules to transport the equipment.
The team removed decommissioned equipment and installed a new Hinge Fold Tilt-Pole that works with the existing Horse Meadow snow pillow that transmits snowpack data to the statewide monitoring network. The Hinge Fold Tilt-Pole has a more robust and stable platform to withstand the harsh mountain elements, requires less maintenance, provides higher reliability, and features a climb-less system that means increased safety for the next generations of workers.
View the photo gallery as the team rides into the sunset on this important mission.
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