As record levels of snow blanket much of the United States this year, Science For Citizens is collaborating with an important climate research project at the University of Waterloo called Snow Tweets. We’re pleased that this is the first of many scientific projects that you’ll be able to do on Science for Citizens.

To help researchers track climate change, we’re requesting that you find a ruler, put on a warm coat, go outside, and measure the depth of snow wherever you happen to be. And then report the depth to us right here. That’s all there is to it! You’re simple action will help the planet. Your data will advance climate science, and you’ll get to see your depth report appear on our world map of snow tweets.

To help you get started, we put together this “How To” video complete with some empirical evidence from your fellow citizen scientists. Enjoy, and please share wildly on your social network of choice.

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Public Preview of Snowbird

Tired of winter? Are snowball fights, sledding, and snowmen just not cutting it anymore? I just might have the cure for those winter blues: SnowTweets, a new citizen science project that uses the popular micro-blogging service, Twitter, to gather snow depth measurements from all over the world.

Measuring snow is actually as easy as sticking a ruler into an undisturbed patch of snow. Tweet that measurement along with your location to the hashtag, #snowteets, and you’ll be helping to make satellite remote sensing estimates and numerical simulation models more accurate.

You can even see your data along with all other reported snow depth measurements using the Snowbird visualization tool. Snowbird shows where the reports are located and how much snow there is at each reported site.

Check out SnowTweets today before it’s too late (i.e. spring arrives!). If you’ve measured any snow depths, tell us about your experience by posting in your Science for Citizens Member Blog. Or you could even send us a tweet at @Sci4Cits.