Just out of curiosity, I was looking at the snow depth that was reported by the automated station at the Cottonwood Lakes area at an altitude of 10,150' which is near the Whitney Zone. Here's the link
http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cgi-progs/queryF?CWD .
The snow depth is in the column labeled "SNOW DP". It wasn't working for awhile and gave screwy readings but it looks like it's OK now, except maybe for a delay in displaying readings. The last reading that is displayed was at 11AM and was 42.40 inches. The reading before the current storm started dumping snow was 13.40 inches. So the current storm has dumped 29 inches of snow there so far. So one might estimate that the current storm has dumped 29 inches so far in the Whitney Zone around the 10,000' level.
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EDIT: The water content in the snow is displayed in the column that is labeled "SNOW WC" at the previously mentioned link. The water content appears to be a reliable reading, or at least it doesn't have periods where it fluctuates wildly like the snow depth data.
By clicking on "SNOW WC" at the top of the column, you can get a plot. This may be a good way of seeing when the snow is falling. It appears that when the plot is flat, no snow is falling. When the plot is inclined, snow is falling. The steeper the incline of the plot, the faster the snow is coming down. Note that below the plot you can change the number of days that the plot covers.
By looking at the last three days for the SNOW WC plot shown below, it looks like it started snowing at Cottonwood Lakes at 8AM 1-4-2008, stopped at 1AM 1-5-2008, started again at 6PM 1-5-2008 and stopped at 4AM 1-6-2008 (this morning). Note this plot is the water content of the snow, not the snow depth. It's only meant to show when snow was falling.
