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plantboy97 OP t1_jdpe010 wrote

This is my first post here! Data source was NOAA Rapid Refresh model Grid 130, processed with XArray, Numpy, Pandas, and Matplotlib in Python

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Chemical-Gammas t1_jdpff7w wrote

Neat visual, but you can’t really tell how the data relates to the z-axis. It would be much easier to tell scale if you had a color-coded legend for the depth.

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phdoofus t1_jdpk9er wrote

Would have been easier and more informative to just make a colored contour map

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Airrows t1_jdpkdvx wrote

This is the opposite of beautiful

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plantboy97 OP t1_jdpkg6b wrote

Replying to JasonBob (#2,364,849)

if you look closely at the beginning of march, you can see the socal storms roll through - I think they don't show up as strongly due to the color scale being shifted way up by the Sierra snowfall. one way to address it would be to make a custom color scale that has more range in the lower end of the spectrum, but I am just using the built in 'inferno' colormap from matplotlib

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Clemario t1_jdpkjib wrote

This reminds me of one of those After Dark screensavers on my 1994 Macintosh

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magog7 t1_jdpowd5 wrote

so many things wrong. Tho I luv the idea.

The black 'baseline' makes the data hard to see

what are the 'vertical' lines on the left side .. very distracting and disorienting

etc

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Hellfire242 t1_jdpt6hz wrote

Nice job OP. Anyone else know how this compares to other states? I know nocal gets its share of snow, but don’t other states get way the fuck more? Only asking cause I’m born here(socal) and feel like we just can’t handle weather other states get all the time.

−1

Autobot_ATrac t1_jdptapx wrote

Damn… the data is beautiful crowd sure do have strong ideas of what is acceptable beauty.

Thanks for the work on this. Yeah, I’m sure there were other ways to present it, but I learned a lot. What a crazy winter they’ve had. Gave at least a pause to the gnarly drought.

Thanks for sharing!

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Inevitable_Cook_1423 t1_jdpu30r wrote

There’s a bunch of people in the Southern California mountains who got buried under 10 feet plus of snow who are saying WTF is this?

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twisted_cistern t1_jdpugp6 wrote

I see why zero is black but it makes it difficult to see small amounts

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Stiggalicious t1_jdpwmog wrote

I assume this is water-equivalent snowpack, essentially if the square foot of snow melted into water and stayed within that square foot, that would be the number represented in this graph?

The Sierras have an absolute shitload of snow this year, and it's pretty incredible. Looking forward to all that snow melting and being used to recharge our aquifers and reservoirs and growing insane amounts of food.

It's also incredible that over 70 million acre-feet of runoff from rain and snow is expected this water year in California alone. That's almost 6 times the entire Colorado River Basin's flow over the past 20 years (~12 million acre-feet). Of course we can only capture a fraction of it, but it's still enough to bring the state back into a good spot (though aquifers take many years to recharge).

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winterfresh0 t1_jdpzx05 wrote

Replying to Porsche928dude (#2,366,206)

Not claiming this will happen here, but just going to mention this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Flood_of_1862

>The event was capped by a warm intense storm that melted the high snow load. The resulting snow-melt flooded valleys, inundated or swept away towns, mills, dams, flumes, houses, fences, and domestic animals, and ruined fields. It has been described as the worst disaster ever to strike California.

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BeebleBopp t1_jdq0nc9 wrote

Great data capture, but little connection to the people in the state. There's no y axis limit indicator of where the Democrat Machine in power will stop screaming about drought conditions. Admonishment of CA citizens for their lack of consideration for 'drought' conditions' were on LA freeway's as recently 3 months ago, and I bet will be returned in 5 months. And it is for this reason the population will be struck with detachment from reality and the Dems might likely lose their power in office since their party has killed all reasonable new rainfall reclamation efforts and infrastructure in the state for the last 40 years, totally, and completely, unnecessarily. (If you ignore the Dem's grab for emotion-driven attainment of power in the name of caring about... fish that will survive...anything.).

So, great graph! But it should connect to the people in some way, as to what they are experiencing.

−16

_CMDR_ t1_jdq65ov wrote

Current snow depth is over 30 feet in some places so this seems a little off.

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ColonelPaper t1_jdq932e wrote

Why would you not make the background black/dark blue so that the visual representing the snow could be white and off-white?

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notexecutive t1_jdq95hd wrote

this is a terrible graph. the z axis doesn't line up with anything south of northern california.

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kbeks t1_jdqcoyp wrote

Replying to winterfresh0 (#2,366,569)

Important caveat is that since then, we’ve damned many rivers and built many reservoirs to capture the runoff. Those were also at historic lows thanks to the drought, so it would take a lot to overcome that deficit and produce such terrible flooding again. Not saying it can’t happen, but it would take a lot. Also, the Dollop did a great episode on the great flood.

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ItDontMather t1_jdqedvv wrote

I’m confused- the starting point for each line is at a different height but all the rest of the measurements are at equal heights- it makes any information under the 0 line impossible to interpret

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Curious_Chemist_9386 t1_jdqfbl6 wrote

My takeaway from the comment section is that the people who are complaining that it doesn't effectively convey information are correct, but I also agree with OP that it looks kind of cool.

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chomerics t1_jdqfqfd wrote

Beautiful? This is a poor visualization.

This should be a top view map, contour, not 3D. I have no idea what the totals are, where they are, no legend, bad colors etc.

What does the news show when explaining snowfall totals? Not this. Reproduce what others do, while this may look cool, it’s a bad visualization for understanding data.

The ONLY time I saw a 3D isometric work was when it was showing real time by minute #of tweets based on location during the World Cup. When a goal was scored, the bars shot up like cheering. This was the ONLY time this map ever made sense to use.

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Klaumbaz t1_jdqg2za wrote

Do Utah next. Record breaking year.

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Hsinats t1_jdqgsr0 wrote

How does the height of the bar go above the back axis? It seems like you are really dedicated to not communicating the data with this visualization.

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dml997 t1_jdqhcdq wrote

3D just obscures the depth. 2D color chart would be more comprehensible.

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DepartmentNatural t1_jdqhdkp wrote

So negative 1foot of snow depth?

I have no idea how to read this

Edit. Nevermind it's a video that takes 10 seconds to load on my phone, sorry

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inno7 t1_jdqi7y7 wrote

The colours are pretty hard to read. At about 2 seconds in, the graph has some dark colour and the base is dark as well.

I had to crank up my display brightness

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Leuvedo t1_jdqj7m5 wrote

Replying to plantboy97 (#2,364,720)

One thing you could consider:

The dark purple is kind of hard to distinguish from the black "0 snow" value. For instance, it took watching a couple times through to see the snow total change in Southern California. You changed the color for 0 to white, and include an outline of the state, or perhaps some other light color that's not already used in your snow depth palette.

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IrishMosaic t1_jdqksup wrote

Replying to kbeks (#2,367,745)

Over 100 dams have been removed in California in the last 30 years. Resulting in historic flooding, mudslides, and the inability to capture the snow runoff before it reaches the pacific.

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missmaxalot t1_jdql8ly wrote

This is beautiful. Yes I saw the comments about the z axis but this isn’t about quants for me. As someone who doesn’t get to hear about northern Cali as much as southern Cali, I love it. I would have also loved if there was a sudden glitch and San Diego or LA got 2 inches.

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millenniumpianist t1_jdqlstx wrote

Replying to SWatersmith (#2,367,876)

As a Californian how the fuck is this a shame, I don't think you understand how badly we needed this water. Don't 3000 IQ yourself here.

Californians have been living in drought conditions since maybe early-mid 2010s. At this point I'm pretty sure we're wired to be concerned about water levels. Especially since groundwater levels are still low. I assure you Californians and public agencies are still thinking about droughts, everyone knows we will eventually have some dry winters. That's just Californian climate. It's just a matter of when.

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trlrnnrallday t1_jdqp0ek wrote

Now make it on a computer that doesn’t run windows 95

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[deleted] t1_jdqpi0a wrote

This data would be better shown with a heat map

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cybercuzco t1_jdqqgvd wrote

Serious question: How deep would it need to be to survive to the next winter, aka begin glaciation?

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Astr0n0mican t1_jdqyxsp wrote

Replying to plantboy97 (#2,364,287)

Good work on your first post! I know a lot of people have been pretty critical already, but improvements aside, it’s kinda cool with the pixely style. I’m sure you already have ideas to make the next one better, and if you make another one, can you do Washington State?

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Goodkoalie t1_jdr0bfq wrote

Replying to Dr-Luemmler (#2,367,769)

Get off an American website/platform if you get so offended over the way Americans write their dates 🤷‍♂️ it’s not rocket science, and living with this amount of stress in your life must really be miserable

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plantboy97 OP t1_jdr0hfh wrote

Replying to Astr0n0mican (#2,370,808)

For sure thank you! And yea I did not expect that type of reaction lol, there are a lot of things that could be improved though. I can definitely do WA, I rewrote the script as a class so its really easy to do any state now

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chemolz9 t1_jdr3lyq wrote

I wouldn't call this data representation beautiful nor helpful. But it is interesting.

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DanteJazz t1_jdr5crd wrote

What’s amazing is in 1 pass, they had 50 feet of snow fall! 50!

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j33205 t1_jdr7c94 wrote

Can't see the smaller numbers that should be covering the rest of the state...

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beene282 t1_jdrbirh wrote

Replying to Goodkoalie (#2,370,969)

Anything on the internet has a global audience. MMDDYY goes from the middle value to the smallest then back to the biggest so when it is clearly illogical and also used by a minority of the world it’s going to get questioned.

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amanamongbotss t1_jdre8r3 wrote

Replying to millenniumpianist (#2,368,989)

While I agree that many don’t see this as a solve, in speaking to my friends that still live in California, 3/6 definitely think that the drought is solved.

Of those 3, 2 are basically totally uninformed about climate change and uninterested in the subject. The other is liberal and understands climate change but is convinced the drought is done and it’s all good from here.

All 3 just keep bringing up how there’s 60ft of snow in the mountains and it’s basically been raining non-stop for 3 months.

I’m probably more pessimistic than they are, but this feels like an extreme weather event (albeit in the other direction from the drought, which was also extreme) and that CA will swing between the two extremes increasingly as time goes on.

But I just wanted to chime in that my anecdotal experience of Californians not being so dumb as to think water issues are over- I think there’s a larger group than you want to admit that truly does.

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amanamongbotss t1_jdrhd68 wrote

Replying to Porsche928dude (#2,373,002)

I hope so! I mean I’m definitely not rooting for the demise of CA, I like seeing them thrive economically and politically (even when it’s not all perfect).

My main concern is exactly that- I get have to basically be able to hold onto water for up to decades and it feels like no one in America, let alone California, is turning the boat fast enough to adjust our practices in the light of climate change.

My fear is all this freshwater just runs into the ocean and they’re in a severe drought again in 2-3 years, and this cycle keeps repeating…

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Nalemag t1_jdrjo73 wrote

Replying to SWatersmith (#2,367,876)

as a native Californian, yes, this is a shame and you are absolutely correct. they are already talking about lifting water restrictions and i'm like no, wtf, keep them in place! (yeah, yeah, yeah, but the excess can't be used anyway. doesn't matter, teach people lessons now for the future)

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Porsche928dude t1_jdrput4 wrote

Replying to amanamongbotss (#2,373,058)

Well considering how low some of your Reservoirs and lakes are I would be very surprised if for nothing else the engineers and officials in charge of water management don’t use all that flood water to fill them back up some. But hey hopefully this isn’t a one off thing and the drought breaks some what. At the very least this should give CA some breathing room to organize better water management practices for the future. Assuming the politicians have the balls and the foresight to go through with it regardless of the short term grumbling.

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adolphtitler t1_jdrwjsj wrote

Replying to plantboy97 (#2,364,540)

I'm no scientologist but I think they ought to do zig zags... That's right zig zags... when the snow melts if it can't go straight down you make it zigzag. That's going to slow it quite a bit and I think it's going to fix your problem.

Alternatively... mountain freezers... snow can melt if you keep it frozen 🌬️

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whydigettwoaccounts t1_jdskm3t wrote

Replying to millenniumpianist (#2,368,989)

Fun Fact: reservoirs in CA also feed western Nevada. Homes and businesses in Reno have had green lawns, very few water restrictions, and water features/parks/etc going this whole time. There are also very few water conservation requirements on buildings and homes. So Yea, a desert state wastes way more CA water than actual Californians.

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mrsprinkles565 t1_jdsp0r6 wrote

Ya but with 12 feet of snowpack they will still bitch about historic drought just to get the rest of the West to give up more water.

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CommieLover69 t1_jdss7rf wrote

Replying to [deleted] (#2,375,964)

bro chill out... it's just a data subreddit. no need to call anyone "Hitler."

op tried something new, and was just providing explanation in the comment... I don't see how that makes what he said "stupid" lol

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Dr_Equinox101 t1_jdt57kb wrote

I’m gonna hate when summer comes and the rivers flood…

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ROBOTVRD t1_jdtm3ym wrote

I live by the goldenrod bits and didn’t get a lift pass this season… 🤪fml🤪

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Toothmouth7921 t1_jdtuot3 wrote

Replying to Porsche928dude (#2,373,002)

It’s complicated and certainly political, especially in the Central Valley where most of the water is used. Crops which are water intensive such as Rice , Cotton and yes Almonds are a huge user of water and building a bunch more little dams are not the answer. I am a 66 year old native and have lived in the Central Valley where some legacy( old timers) ranchers and farmers have almost bulletproof water rights, which means they can choose to grow crops which don’t make since in a semi arid place like California. There is a lot of cattle ranching, in central California and is extremely water intensive as well. Climate change is here to stay and the State is going to have to adapt. It can but will take time and $$

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Autobot_ATrac t1_jdu7kno wrote

Replying to Autobot_ATrac (#2,365,915)

A handful of you really took this comment personally. Note that most of it is me complimenting the creator. And the first part isn’t some hard insult to you, it’s just an observation.

Weird ass subreddit.

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Shcrews t1_jdurhfx wrote

we were snowed in for 2 weeks here near yosemite

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ripewildstrawberry t1_jdwz0sn wrote

This is awesome. I follow snow depth almost religiously. Are you visualizing the same dataset as the NOHRSC?

Again, I really like this. Well done.

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