Searching for Information in 133 Years of California Snowfall Observations

Monthly snowfall totals from over 500 stations in California, some of which date back to 1878, are examined. Most data were accessed through the NOAA archive, but several thousand station months of data were separately keyed in from image files of original documents. Over 26 000 of these entries were new relative to the NOAA archive, generally providing data prior to 1920. The stations were then subdivided into 18 regions for the construction of representative time series of each area. There were problems with the basic data the most difficult with which to deal was the increasing presence of zero totals that should have been recorded as missing. This and other issues reduce the confidence that the regional time series are representative of true variations and trends, especially for regions with few systematically reporting stations. Interpreting linear trends on time series with infrequent large anomalies of one sign (i.e., heavy snowfall years) and unresolved data issues should be done with caution. 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.