How do I measure blowing and drifting snow?

Do you have a picnic table maybe, some spot like that, shielded from the wind, somewhere, something where the snow falls straight down and there’s no wind? The snow that accumulates on my picnic table, on the patio, in the back, is usually a reliable place to measure snow for me because it doesn’t drift, no wind. What falls there is what has fallen. I have no clue if there’s some kind of formula for measuring snow fall by calculating the height of drifts and the wind speed, I really doubt that there is.

The thing is, we’re on a farm with just a few trees. I can see flat land for several miles in every direction and it’s windy here almost every day. This is such a dry snow too. That’s why I wondered, how do they measure in these conditions?

Thanks for answering @lillycoyote. Your suggestion would have worked out our old house in town. :)

I lurve you for trying @lillycoyote.

What about fashioning some kind of snow gauge? Like a rain gauge, except for snow? When they report the snow fall at the airport here they use some kind of snow gauge. They don’t just go out to one of the runways and drop yardstick in the ground. You should be able to make or find some kind of snow gauge contraption on the internet. If you people in Illinois are smart enough to build the Aludium Q36 Pumpkin Modulator, you’re certainly smart enough to build a snow gauge. Really, come on, how hard can it be?

Haha. A good friend of ours was one of the engineers of the Aludium Q36. He had to go and move to Wisconsin though.

Too late for a snow gauge now. Maybe the next blizzard? ;)

@jonsblond I thought the Aludium Q36 was the space modulator that Marvin The Martian was going to use to destroy the earth?

Set out a half-dozen tall, thin cylinders in different locations. Then melt the contents of each and average the volume. That’s essentially what meteorologists do.

@missingbite Yes. That was our friend. Interesting fellow. joking,haha. Here’s The Aludium Q36. Made by the guys at Parker Fabrication in Morton, IL.

Thank you @SmashTheState.

@jonsblond That is awesome!!! I misspelled mine.

Take a yard stick,and poke a bunch of drifts.Then average out the numbers and add 53.7” to that.Then make up a bunch of bullshit to create panic in the fine people in your area! Ta-da! Mission accomplished!
That is what the weatherpeople do in my neck of the woods and it makes for very good entertainment….for a second. XD