X-Snow Project Fills Gap in East Coast Snow Data

This winter, many people living in the soft peaks of New York’s Adirondack and Catskill Mountains are eagerly watching the season’s snowfalls and wondering just how much they’ll get. Some may be hoping enough snow will fall to cancel school or open ski trails. For hundreds of enthusiastic volunteers, they’re doing it as citizen scientists participating in a unique project dubbed X-Snow that benefits residents and research projects along the East Coast and around the world.

The goal of X-Snow is to inexpensively add to the amount of snow data available for the region by offering fun, easy, and interesting ways for residents to accurately measure and report on snowfall from their own backyards. The data collected will be used to more precisely understand snow and winters along the East Coast, validating NASA’s remote sensing snow measurements and models, and estimating snowpack contributions to regional drinking water supplies. The measurements will also be used for pollution, climate, and environmental research, such as analyzing the snow for the presence of microplastics.

The project is funded by NASA's Citizen Science for Earth Systems Program (CSESP), which funds the development and implementation of projects that work with NASA Earth observing systems and involve participation by members of the general public to advance our understanding of Earth.

"This is a great project for NASA Earth Science and should clearly enhance our ability to accurately understand snowfall in the East in concert with our remote sensing systems and all of the downstream effects of that,” said CSESP Program Manager Dr. Gerald (Stinger) Guala. “It clearly demonstrates that even the most complex technical sensing systems can really benefit greatly from Citizen Scientists taking simple measurements on the ground."

X-Snow is led by Dr. Marco Tedesco, Margie Turrin, and Marisa Annunziato of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory.

"The idea with X-Snow is really to fill the gap of currently existing measurements of snow properties over the U.S.," said Tedesco. "There have been a lot of measurements and intensive studies on snow in the Western United States, but East Coast snow is not the same and we don’t have the on-the-ground infrastructure that exists out there. X-Snow will help gather more data by building the culture and infrastructure to collect it."

One key reason for the gap is East Coast terrain and vegetation aren’t easily surveyed using satellites and other remote sensing platforms. Most remote sensing algorithms were developed and validated for measuring snow in places such as the Rocky and Sierra Nevada Mountains, where there was initially more interest and funding for the work. The algorithms based on Western U.S. snow are therefore geared toward the region and would likely produce erroneous results when applied to East Coast observations. X-Snow will provide validation data that scientists can use to create algorithms configured to specifically gauge snow in New York and areas with similar conditions.

Participants can submit the data online using forms or apps. There are also opportunities to do more sophisticated observations such as measuring snow albedo, collecting data from a dug out area called a snow pit, and sending in samples to be analyzed for the presence of microplastics.

“The idea is to have a group of people ready when the snow comes because it quickly changes over time, turning to crust and such, and so we need to collect data in a burst for it to be useful,” said Tedesco.

Tedesco says the project team is also experimenting with collecting data using webcams and machine learning to train computers to observe snowfall and measure its depth based on what they detect. The systems, for example, could be solar-powered and wirelessly connected, then installed in a prairie or forested area to remotely observe and report snowfalls and weather conditions.

Making the Data Useful

Whether the data is supplied by drone, people, or remote webcam, X-Snow has plans to eventually provide it in real-time and with geolocation.

"It’s important to give something back to the people, to make the data useful to them,” said Tedesco.

Starting this spring, Tedesco and the X-Snow team will begin developing a system to host data and display it on the X-Snow website. Ideally, they’d like to have a system that can plot the data on a clickable map or something similar, allowing users to see current measurements as well as view previous data for the location. Additionally, the data will eventually be available through Earthdata Search to ensure it can used by as many people who want it.

Next year, the X-Snow project will expand its scope to play a role in the upcoming NASA-ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation) Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission to survey Earth’s surface in unprecedented detail. X-Snow will provide on-the-ground “truth” measurements along the East Coast that will be compared to what NISAR’s instruments see to evaluate and calibrate their function.

Whether the data is gathered for fun by kids in the Catskills or to support a revolutionary Earth observation mission, X-Snow is a citizen science project that gives people the opportunity to help conduct science that matters both at home and abroad. Best of all, it’s simple, fun, and one more great reason for locals to be excited for snowstorms.

Learn more about X-Snow, CSESP, and other NASA citizen science projects funded for 2025 and beyond.