Anna and Willemijn out taking samples

Snowmelt sampling in Swift Current

Swift Current Field Site

Anna has spent the last few weeks sampling snowmelt in southern Saskatchewan at Swift Current’s Semiarid Prairie Agricultural Research Centre’s runoff plots. The melting kicked off at the end of March – an unusually late and unpredictable snowmelt – and has been stopping and starting since then, with some real gushing coming in the first week of April. Willemijn and Julian joined in the fun for a few of days, so it was all hands on deck to take snow and runoff samples.
Julian modeling a toilet brush (...the snow corer cleaner)
Right when the plots were almost snow-free, the weather took a turn for the worse and a snowstorm swept through Swift Current adding a fresh layer. More melt is to come in the coming days and weeks when the temperatures hot up and spring finally decides to stick around! For now, though, we have a great set of around 500 samples to process and some exciting data to pore over.
Sunset over the site