This dataset includes historical observations of the daily depth of snow on the ground (daily climate element 013) made at Environment and Climate Change Canada (ECCC) sites by manual ruler or by a sonic sensor equipped autostations. The history of the ECCC daily snow depth observing program is provided in Brown et al. (2021) along with a detailed intercomparison of ruler and sonic sensor observations that showed manual observations typically reporting more snow than a nearby sonic sensor. The database includes a measurement method flag to differentiate between the two methods. This update extends the Canadian historical daily snow depth database (originally provided on the Canadian Snow CD in 2000) up to the end of the 2016/17 snow season. The same procedures were applied to fill missing values and QC data - see MSC (2000) and Brown and Braaten (1998). This latest update was carried out for snow seasons 2000/01 to 2016/17, where a snow season is defined as starting August 01 and ending July 31, and the data merged with the previous update made in 2004 covering the period up to snow season 2003/04. The 2000-2003 period was included in this update to take account of additional data in the ECCC climate archive that were unavailable in 2004. Daily snow depth data for the period after July 31, 2017 can be downloaded using the daily climate data extraction tool at the Canadian Centre for Climate Services (https://climate-change.canada.ca/climate-data/#/daily-climate-data).
Warning: The method used to reconstruct snow cover is likely to considerably underestimate snow depth
from underestimation of solid precipitation, and the assumption that fallen snow immediately attains a density
of 300 kg/m3 upon reaching the ground. Reconstructed snow depths are not considered reliable for data gaps
larger than ~14 days.