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Visualizing California’s Water Storage – Reservoirs and Snowpack

Visualizing California's Water Storage - Reservoirs and Snowpack - Engaging Data

https://engaging-data.com/california-reservoirs-and-snowpack/

California's snow pack is essentially another "reservoir" that is able to store water in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Graphing these things together can give a better picture of the state of California's water and drought.

Visualizing California's Water Storage - Reservoirs and Snowpack - Engaging Data

Updates daily and can be fun to watch while the storms roll through

9 comments

Mr_Blott

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Dare I ask what insane unit of measurement a kaf is?

ultimitchow

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1 kaf is 1000 acre-feet, 1 acre-foot is the volume of the surface area of an acre to a depth of 1 foot.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acre-foot

In less insane units 1kaf is 1233481837L

ClockworkOtter

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That's mad! Why not just use cubic metres or litres?

Fermion

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speculation present

Rainfall is measured in inches. If you want to grow a specific crop, you can look up how many inches water that crop needs over a growing season. Rainfall naturally already includes an area factor in it, but if you're spreading a volume of water over multiple fields, expressing that volume in acres*inches or acres*ft is relatively reasonable.

It's also a reasonably direct way to measure the amount of water stored in a reservoir. If you know the area of the reservoir in acres, then any height changes can just be multiplied by the surface area of that resevoir.

I'm all for metric in science and manufacturing, but this particular odd unit does seem to fit the application well.

ClockworkOtter

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Sounds plausible

Zachariah

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Americans will use literally any other units than metric.

Viking_Hippie

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How many Barn-megaparsecs is that?

Zachariah

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https://www.theonion.com/whale-expert-measures-everything-in-elephants-1819569666

Mr_Blott

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How to make most people immediately discount your scientific data - quote measurements in pedal extremities