John R. Christy

Journal of Hydrometeorology

Published date June 27, 2012

Searching for Information in 133 Years of California Snowfall Observations

  • Examines monthly snowfall totals from over 500 stations in California, some of which date back to 1878
  • Divides stations into 18 regions for the construction of representative time series of each area
  • Finds that for those regions characterized by consistent monitoring and with the most robust statistical reproducibility, no statistically significant trends in their periods of record (up to 133 years) nor in the most recent 50 years are found—this result encompasses the main snowfall region of the western slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains