Two Weather Stations Rebuilt At Sequoia And Kings Canyon National Parks

Two weather stations at Sequoia and Kings Canyon national parks have been rebuilt, ensuring important data collection continues within the park, according to the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), which completed the repairs in August 2025.

More than a dozen weather stations in the park help to measure snowpack, air temperature, and rainfall, among other things. If they cannot collect accurate measurements, water managers may not be able to arrive at accurate predictions and make key flood risk management decisions.

The data collected from the stations helps inform the decisions of not only USACE but the California Department of Water Resources, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and other agencies. It is also publicly accessible via USACE-operated Access to Water (A2W) and the California Data Exchange Center.

The two stations that needed repairs were Upper Tyndall near Mt Whitney, in the Kern River watershed, and Mitchell Meadow near Cedar Grove, California, in the Kings River watershed.   

In 2017, the Upper Tyndall station began leaning after heavy snowfall that season, and Mitchell Meadow was found collapsed during an annual maintenance visit in 2023.  Upper Tyndall had continued to collect limited data, but Mitchell Meadow was completely offline after the collapse.  

Each tower required a 14-day construction period, according to USACE. Due to the remote location of the sites, the team and all necessary equipment and material arrived onsite via helicopter. Part of the team would fly to the weather station, while the rest remained near the helicopter landing zone. In the landing zone, concrete and other materials were airlifted as much as 12 miles to the weather station.   

Once at the construction site, the towers were rebuilt from the foundation up. The new towers are ten feet taller than the previous stations and now stand 30 feet tall. The new height accounts for the significant amount of snow that often falls at those locations.  

The sites also now include a snow pillow to measure snowpack, a new precipitation gauge that measures the amount of rainfall by collecting rain in a small seesaw-like bucket, and a data logger, which controls all the sensors on the tower. Sensors measure liquid precipitation, snow depth, temperature, relative humidity, wind, soil moisture, and solar radiation.  

“We maintain [the data] for the use of our reservoirs, but it's also for anybody that's out there,” said Jesse Schlunegger, Hydrology and Hydraulics branch chief at USACE. “For hikers and folks in the park, it's a data point for them to use as well. So, it’s a public good.”