Winter Snow Depth

I’ve been recording snow depth in the woods by our house since December of 2011. Every month I share the data with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. They use it to calculate the winter severity index (WSI) for whitetail deer. The index is calculated by adding the number of days with 18 inches or more of snow on the ground to the number of days when the low temperature was 0^o degrees F (-17^o C) or below.

This winter (2023-2024) has had unusually little snow so far. It’s the first time in 13 years that we’ve had bare ground in February!

In the graph below, you can hover the cursor over any line to see which winter it corresponds to.

Last updated April 03, 2024.

Created using the statistical software R, including packages knitr, readxl, plotly, and tidyverse.