snow-depth-tileserver

This is a tile server to display snow depth as an overlay.

Background

While preparing to hike the Pacific Crest trail, I searched and was unable to find snow depth as a layer that could be used with mapping software like Gaia GPS. Caltopo similarly doesn't have a snow depth layer.

Given available data, I wanted to see if I could build a dynamic map layer.

This map layer uses NOAA's snow depth data, and should be the same as the Forest Service interactive map.

Using with Gaia GPS

Map Legend

The legend is the same as NOAA's:

• 0-1cm (0-0.4in)
• 1-5cm (0.4-2.0in)
• 5-10cm (2.0-3.9in)
• 10-25cm (3.9-9.8in)
• 25-50cm (9.8-20in)
• 50-100cm (20-39in)
• 100-150cm (39-59in)
• 150-250cm (59-98in)
• 250-500cm (98-197in)
• 500-750cm (197-295in)
• 750-1000cm (295-394in)
• 1000+cm (394+in)

Technical details

Dependencies

• GDAL. I installed gdal-bin from the Ubuntu GIS apt repository, because that gives GDAL 2.4.0, while the standard APT repository gives 2.2, and there's a bug with reading SNODAS data that was fixed in GDAL 2.3.

  sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntugis/ppa
  sudo apt update
  sudo apt install gdal-bin
  

• TileServer GL. This serves the MBTiles as a web application. This requires docker to be installed. (I had trouble installing it with plain Node).

  To run the web server:

  docker run --rm -it -v $(pwd):/data -p 8080:80 klokantech/tileserver-gl snow_depth.MBTiles