Scott McGatigan, an engineer with the Utah Division of Water Resources, said his section’s Airborne Snow Observatory program will conduct additional airborne surveys over a watershed in coming years to collect more snow-depth data.

McGatigan told the meeting that the ASO flights use lidar and spectrometers and follow a “lawn mower” flight pattern to capture snow depth across drainages. “They use lidars and and spectrometers and fly in a lawn mower pattern, you could say, across, a watershed or a basin and capture, the snow depth with this technology,” he said.

The program plans “several more flights over this watershed over the next three years,” McGatigan said, and officials expect the new measurements to help ASO evaluate and adjust its measurement methods. “We think it's important to have more data points to provide to ASO so they can get a sense of how how their their measurements are performing and adjust as necessary,” he said. McGatigan called the most recent flight “the first of many” and said the additional data should improve understanding of how snow is distributed across the watershed.

The speaker did not specify the watershed name, the flight schedule beyond the three-year window, or funding sources for the flights. No formal action, vote, or staff assignment was recorded during the remarks.

Details on when the next flights will occur, the number of additional passes planned, and how the ASO data will be integrated into state water planning were not provided during the presentation.