snow.outsidedb.com pulls together SNOTEL station data, NWS point forecasts, and interactive mapping tools so you can quickly assess snowpack and recent accumulation across the western US — and now into British Columbia. This guide walks through the main pages, explains the less-obvious features, and covers some recent additions worth knowing about.
Pages at a Glance
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Map View The main landing page. An interactive map displays SNOTEL stations as color-coded markers, with each dot representing recent snowfall at that elevation. You can zoom, pan, and click any station to see a detailed popup. The accumulation slider and home location tools live here.
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Station Table Scrollable below the map, this table is live-linked to your map view. As you pan and zoom, the table automatically updates to show only the stations currently visible on screen, ranked by snow accumulation. This makes it easy to zero in on a specific range, move the map to that area, and immediately see which stations are leading the pack — no filtering or searching required.
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Historical Charts Plots SWE over time for individual stations, letting you compare the current snowpack curve against median and historic percentiles. Useful for understanding whether conditions are ahead of or behind a typical year.
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State / Region Pages Filtered views that narrow the map and table down to stations within a specific state or mountain range, so you're not scrolling past stations in other regions.
Setting Your Home Location
The Set Home Location button in the top bar of the map does more than just save a pin — it saves your exact map position and zoom level. Whenever you return to snow.outsidedb.com, the map will open right where you left it, zoomed in on the terrain you actually care about.
To use it, navigate to the area you want as your default view, zoom in to the level you prefer, and then click Set Home Location. Your browser saves this preference locally, so the next time you open the dashboard — on the same device — it drops you straight into your home range without any extra navigation.
If you regularly check a specific zone — say the Bitterroot or the Cascades — get the map framed just right, then lock it in with Set Home Location. It makes the dashboard feel like it was built just for your backyard.
The Accumulation Slider
The slider bar at the top of the map controls how many days of snowfall accumulation are added together and shown on the station markers. Sliding it to the right extends the window further back in time, summing up each day's new snow into a single running total.
For example, setting the slider to 3 days shows the total new snow that fell across the last three days combined — not just the most recent 24 hours. This is especially useful after a multi-day storm cycle where no single day looks that impressive but the total accumulation tells the real story. Push the slider out further to see a week's worth of accumulation, or pull it back to isolate just the last 24 hours.
After a slow storm that delivered a few inches per day over several days, try sliding out to 5–7 days. You'll often find stations that quietly stacked up a foot or more while staying off the radar.
NWS Point Forecasts per Station
Every SNOTEL station in the dashboard is linked to its own National Weather Service point forecast — the same hyper-local forecast the NWS generates for the precise coordinates of that station. This gives you not just what has fallen, but what's coming.
To access the forecast, find the station you're interested in either on the map or in the station table. In the far-right column of the table, there's a forecast link icon for each row. Clicking it opens the NWS point forecast for that station's exact location — temperature, precipitation, wind, and snowfall outlook for the next several days.
You can also copy the URL directly to share or bookmark a specific station's forecast. Once you've navigated to a station's page, the URL in your browser updates to reflect that station. Copy it and send it to a partner so you're both looking at the same data — no hunting required.
New: British Columbia Snow Stations New
The dashboard has recently added snow reporting stations from British Columbia, bringing Canadian backcountry terrain into the same view as the US SNOTEL network. This is particularly useful for anyone planning trips to the Kootenays, the Selkirks, or BC Coast Range objectives that straddle or sit just north of the border.
A couple of things to be aware of as this rolls out: the BC stations currently appear on the map, but they are not yet included in the sortable station table below the map — that integration is coming. Additionally, the BC stations currently display 48-hour accumulation only, rather than the full multi-day slider range available for US stations. Expanded time-range support for BC stations is actively in development and will be updated soon.
BC station data is sourced separately from SNOTEL, so there may be differences in reporting intervals and sensor types. As always, cross-reference with local avalanche centers and your own field observations before making backcountry decisions.
Questions or Feedback?
The dashboard is an independent project, and features get added based on what the community actually needs. If something isn't working the way you'd expect, or if there's a region or data layer you'd like to see added, reach out via the contact page or find us on Instagram at @outside_dashboard.