# Snow-to-Flow Hyperlinks in the Down River Report



## GeoRon (Jun 24, 2015)

I have completed hyperlinks to the NRCS Snow-to-Flow Graphs in the Down River Report that I post daily at downriverequip.com. 

Granted, it has been said, understanding the potential of the Down River Report defines someone "with too much time on their hands"; which truly defines the author as "retired". The Down River Report is the "Swiss Army knife" of instant access to everything on the internet of significance to Colorado Front Range river runners(gee, I hope so otherwise whatta I gotta do now).

These Snow-to-Flow graphs were recently brought to our attention by Beau Uriona(buzzer beautah) at the Utah Data Collection Office. He says his work is in the "beta" phase. He welcomes visits to his work and enjoys discussing it.

The Snow-to-Flow graphs displays the continuity of the Snow-to-Flow process and their empirical (statistical) relationship when forecasting future flows. Especially important is the display of flow as either linear or log and the rapid comparison of different years. For us boaters, linear plotting is more better than the USGS’s Water Watch log presentation which I have always linked to in column 1. The rapid comparison of any previous years obviously allows best-fit scenarios to speculate future runoff behavior.

I dedicated column 32 symbol “0” to links to Beau's graphs(column number near bottom of page). The hyperlinks defined in this column permit instant access into Beaus' work at four levels of entry; western US, state, basin and individual river gages. A few of the gages are not the ideal gage but adequate to understanding the Snow-to-Flow concept and the status of a given hydrologic basin's snowpack and the flow for a reach of river. 

I also added a hyperlink button titled “S-to-F” to each “Basin Percent of Average” graph on page 2 to permit instant access to the Snow-to-Flow graph that best characterizes each basin.

Thank you Beau and the Utah Data Collection office of the NRCS for these excellent graphs.


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## GeoRon (Jun 24, 2015)

*How are hyperlinks recognized and how many are there?*

I have been asked how to distinguish a hyperlink in the report and how many there are.

Cells that contain hyperlink are defined by underlined text. For example, Row 1 Cell 1 in the upper left most corner of the full report is a pseudo disclaimer partially derived from the American Whitewater Association website concerning river safety. The text is underlined defining that that cell is a hyperlink and if clicked links to the AWA extensive website regarding river safety.

There are 1,694 hyperlinks in the report.

If you intend to click on hyperlinks, which is the major purpose of the report, I suggest downloading the report and opening it locally using Adobe Acrobat. If you use hyperlinks within a browser, I suggest that you right click on the hyperlink and select "Open in new window".


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## GeoRon (Jun 24, 2015)

*Yampa and MF Salmon Flows. Practical Application of the Snow-to-Flow Graphs*

I mentioned earlier today activation of hyperlinks to the NRCS Snow-to-Flow Graphs provided by the Utah Data Collection Office.

I undertook a task to demonstrate the practical value of these graphs using perhaps the best examples of free flowing rivers and the two rivers I'm receiving the most questions about; the MF Salmon and the Yampa. 

The process is to find best matches of current status with the status at the current date in previous years. Of course, the future is not easy to predict but we are at least able to visually match current content in the snow pack, river status and an empirical relationship of trends. Also, by taking into consideration the NOAA outlooks(Row 1 columns 33-35) we can perhaps factor in some aspect of future meteorological influences; for example the outlook for these two rivers are warmer and dryer than average.

Briefly, by opening the hyperlink in column 32 to the Snow-to-Flow graphic for the MF Salmon, 2012, was identified to be the best match. Please examine and see if you concur(I feel as though I reading Spock's script from a Star Trek episode).
https://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/ftpref/states/ut/iCharts/dev/SWE_Q/ID/Mf Salmon R at Mf Lodge.html

Likewise, I believe for the Yampa, 2013, is the best fit.
https://www.wcc.nrcs.usda.gov/ftpref/states/ut/iCharts/dev/SWE_Q/CO/Yampa R nr Maybell.html

For both of these rivers, the NOAA outlook for this year matches the suggestion of patterns for these two rivers in the identified previous years, which is, warmer than average temperatures and lower than average precipitation resulting in a steady depletion of snow pack going forward with peaks likely caused by thermal events(heatwaves) or thunderstorms(rain on snow pack) that in no way contribute to the late season snow pack.

Other people have mentioned, Beau recognizes and again I suggested today to Beau that it would be ideal to define all predictive parameters, i.e.; if only temperature and precipitation could be over plotted in some way on the Snow-to-Flow Plot. Let's leave that to Beau's magic to figure out how.

On page two of my report many of these parameters are graphed for the current two weeks. For each state I provide snow pack trends, temperature status and trends, precip events and river flow (index) responses. In the future I'd like to bring into play temperatures relative to average at both the state and basin level. Once they are in place we can continue this discussion in the future.


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