![](images/header0.jpg)
![Cloud Seeding](images/radiometer-sm.jpg)
How much snow does cloud-seeding produce? Soon scientists will be closer to knowing the answer. NSF-supported researchers have begun a cloud-seeding experiment in southwestern Idaho. Dubbed SNOWIE (Seeded and Natural Orographic Wintertime Clouds -- the Idaho Experiment), the project is taking place in and near the Payette Basin, 50 miles north of Boise, Idaho.
![Winter Storm Chasing](images/pic01.jpg)
SCHUSS. The term for a straight, downhill ski run. In the land of the "Greatest Snow on Earth" -- Utah -- SCHUSS is also the moniker for storm-chasing, Old Man Winter-style.
![Conifer's View](images/pic02.jpg)
If trees could talk, what winter tales they might tell: of the frozen soil in which they're rooted, the snows that fall on their branches, the icy rivers and streams that flow beneath, and the health of the entire forest.
![Nature's Igloo](images/pic03.jpg)
The subnivium, it's called, this refuge beneath the snow that's insulated and maintains a constant temperature. It's nature's igloo for all winter creatures great and small.
![Winter Ice](images/pic04.jpg)
If you're planning to skate on a frozen lake or river this winter, ski on a snowy slope, or, when spring arrives, depend on snowmelt to refill your water supply, you may need to think twice. December-to-March may be less like the winters we remember.
![Snowshoe Hare](images/snowshoehare.jpg)
The Tale of the Spruce vs. the Hare
It's a new story of the race between the tortoise and the hare. Now it's a dead heat between a white spruce tree and a snowshoe hare. Which will win? Scientists at the National Science Foundation Bonanza Creek Long-Term Ecological Research site in Alaska are chasing down answers.