Political Quotes

“I rise to speak in support of the Snow Water Supply Forecasting Program Authorization Act, which I introduced today with Senator Harris. Representatives Josh Harder, John Garamendi, Jerry McNerney, Grace Napolitano, T.J. Cox, and Ami Bera--all Democrats from California--and Diana DeGette and Joe Neguse--both Democrats from Colorado--have introduced identical companion legislation in the House. Airborne snow observatory, ASO, technology is a snow monitoring tool that provides precise measurement of depth and water content for every square meter of snow in a watershed. The technology measures snow depth and water content using an airplane-mounted light detection, LiDAR, instrument coupled with an imaging spectrometer. When combined with conventional snow surveys, ASO provides a near- perfect picture of snow water content. By near perfect, I mean that ASO estimates snowpack and runoff forecast with 96 to 99 percent accuracy. This is much better than current practices, which only measure snowpack and runoff with 50 to 90 percent accuracy. These forecast accuracies are achieved by comparing LiDAR measurements of bare ground topography in the summer with multiple measurements of snow depth during the winter. The greatest accuracies are based on once-a-month flights in watersheds earlier in the winter, and twice monthly flights during the spring runoff period.…”