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ITD Mailbox

Thanks for assisting snow survey team

James F. Carpenter
District 2 Engineer
The Snow Survey Office of the Natural Resources Conservation Services would like to express our great appreciation for the valuable and timely assistance provided by Mike Allen in your Bovill maintenance office on Tuesday, Jan. 4.

You may know our agency operates and maintains a network of 80 remote, automated snow and climate monitoring sites called SNOTEL (SNOwTelemetry), that provide hourly data in support of our primary mission of forecasting seasonal water supply. One of these sites is the Sherwin SNOTEL site located about eight miles north of Bovill off the gravel road east of Highway 3, just past mile marker 47. The site electronics had failed a week earlier and required a site visit by Jeff Graham and Chad Gipson, our staff electronics technicians. The site is a few miles off the paved highway and requires snowmobiles for access during the winter.

When our crew arrived that morning in their work truck, towing the snowmobile trailer, there were no plowed out areas to park along the highway anywhere in the vicinity. They went forward Clarkia until they could turn around and then drove back to the ITD maintenance shop in Bovill, seeking information or assistance.

The first person they encountered was Mike Allen. They asked if someone might be able to plow out an area to park, thinking they might have to come back later or in a few days to complete the work. Much to their surprise, Mike was totally agreeable, interested and friendly, and said no problem. In fact, he suited up, jumped on a front-end loader and told our guys to follow him up there, and within just a short time he plowed out a safe area off the pavement. He even formed a little ramp so they could get their snow machines safely up the snow bank to do the job.

This kind of cooperation is highly commendable, and we really appreciate the fact that Mr. Allen took time out from his normal duties to provide a service to our crew in such a timely fashion. It certainly made their day, and getting this critical SNOWTEL site back on line is extremely beneficial to the water users in Idaho.

Thanks again, Mike.

Richard Sims
State Conservation Natural Resource Conservation Service