Tim Bardsley and Mark W. Williams
Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research and
Department of Geography, CB 450,
University of Colorado, Boulder, CO
Figure 3.
A comparison of annual precipitation totals from 1987
through 1996 show that the average precipitation amount of
1854 mm measured at the saddle site was 54% greater than the
1200 mm measured at D1.
A pooled t-test shows that this difference was significant
at the alpha = 0.05 level (p = 0.002, n = 10).
Furthermore,
the standard deviation of annual precipitation at the saddle
of 580 mm was about twice that of the 206 mm at D1.
We hypothesize that
the higher standard deviation at the saddle site
may be caused by blowing snow.
Wind speed, available snow, and surface hardness are the
three main variables controlling snow redistribution and
are highly variable with time.