On a snowy February morning, Toby Rodgers strapped on a pair of snowshoes and trudged across a snowy field in Washington’s Cascade mountains. Rodgers, a hydrologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, had traveled into the mountains that morning to sample snow. He had also brought along something unusual looking: a long aluminum tube, with a sharp serrated bit on the end.
When he reached his destination, Rodgers carefully positioned the tube in front of him, then quickly drove the tube into the ground. Then, he pulled the snow-filled tube out of the ground, and weighed it on a spring scale. From this simple measurement, Rodgers could get a sense of how much snow was in the mountains — and how much water might be in the rivers, lakes, and reservoirs downstream when it melts in the summer.
The tube that Rodgers used is called the Church Sampler. And while it’s super-simple and low-tech, it’s arguably one of the most influential devices ever invented for predicting drought and managing water.
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