| Abstract: |
Snow plays an important role in a variety of social and environmental sectors for which real-time monitoring can be used to inform managerial and logistical decisions. In more southerly regions of the United States, such as Kentucky, snow is classified as ephemeral or transient. In those locations, there exists limited infrastructure to monitor snow conditions at frequencies shorter than daily temporal scales. In this study, a climatologically-informed approach to identify regions within the Commonwealth of Kentucky that could be targeted for a deployment of snow monitoring instrumentation is conducted. The study aims to identify locations that are representative of their larger climate division characteristics. Results indicate there are many 4km grid cells within each of Kentucky’s four climate divisions for which over 80% of variance in climate-division-averaged snow season snow depth, snow water equivalent, and snow cover frequency are explained. Results are then aligned with the geographic locations of existing Kentucky Mesonet observation stations. The five stations per climate division with the most variance in snow characteristics explained are documented and prioritized for further consideration for snow monitoring instrumentation. This approach can be used to efficiently identify suitable locations across relatively large domains and could be scaled to account for available budget and operational needs. |
