Task Summary Reports

Task 1 Report
This project began by digitizing all hand-written meteorological observing records from the pre-1948 era yielding a database totaling 370 stations with some records dating back to the 1850's. This database was merged with the post-1948 observations and stored using the Summary of the Day (SOD) format as defined by the National Climate Data Center (NCDC). A summary of the task and listing of available stations in the database can be viewed here.

Task 2 Report
For Task 2 of this project, the snowfall, precipitation, temperature and wind records for Minnesota were analyzed generating the following statistics: snow accumulation season, mean seasonal snowfall, percentile rankings and probability of exceedence, snow water equivalence and finally wind frequency distributions. This report summarizes the techniques used for the analysis and provides a link to each product.

Task 3 Report
Following the guidelines of Dr. Ronald Tabler (1994) and utilizing the climatological products developed in task 2, snow transport models were run for Minnesota. Also a field study was conducted to investigate some of the agricultural implications of living snow fences. Visit this link to learn more about the impact of living snow fences.

Task 4 Report
Included in this report is a brief summary of the Web Site hosting the climatological products and instructions on how to retrieve climate data from the Minnesota State Climatology Office Web Site.