Editing Openai/69235e49-f78c-8001-a70a-37b4e2caa0d3


{{DISPLAYTITLE:Snow alert automation setup}}

''This conversation was exported from ChatGPT''<ref>{{cite web|title=Snow alert automation setup|url=https://chatgpt.com/share/69235e49-f78c-8001-a70a-37b4e2caa0d3|publisher=ChatGPT|access-date=2026-01-19}}</ref>

== gpt-5-1 ==
=== User: I’m looking for an automation to let me know where there’s new snow at Sunshine village or ski Louise. ===
I’m looking for an automation to let me know where there’s new snow at Sunshine village or ski Louise. There were some automated snow plots I could scrape but I think it’s gone. It was Mountain-weather.ca or something like that.

=== Assistant: Great—there is usable data for an alert/automation for fresh snow at Sunshine Village and likely Lake Louise — let me w… ===
Great—there is usable data for an alert/automation for fresh snow at Sunshine Village (and likely Lake Louise) — let me walk you through how you can set this up:

===== ✅ Data sources found =====
* Sunshine Village: There’s a snow-plot station labelled “SUNQ1 – Sunshine Village Snow Site” on the Northwest River Forecast Center page, showing snow water equivalent (SWE), depth, etc. nwrfc.noaa.gov<ref>{{cite web|title=nwrfc.noaa.gov|url=https://www.nwrfc.noaa.gov/snow/snowplot.cgi?SUNQ1=|publisher=nwrfc.noaa.gov|access-date=2026-01-19}}</ref>
* Alberta’s “Mountain Snow Course Data & Observation Reports” portal (via Alberta Environment and Parks / WaterPortal) shows they maintain similar data streams. Canada WaterPortal<ref>{{cite web|title=Canada WaterPortal|url=https://waterportal.ca/historical-data-and-observation-reports/|publisher=Canada WaterPortal|access-date=2026-01-19}}</ref>
* Lake Louise: There’s mention of an RSS feed for snow reports in the Lake Louise API docs (look at “SNOW-RSS.php”). api.skilouise.com<ref>{{cite web|title=api.skilouise.com|url=https://api.skilouise.com/docs/SNOW-RSS.php|publisher=api.skilouise.com|access-date=2026-01-19}}</ref>

===== 🛠 Proposed automation outline =====

Here’s how you could build an alert system for “new snow” (for example a threshold of +5 cm in 24 hours or similar) for either or both resorts:
# Data extraction - For Sunshine: scrape the SUNQ1 station HTML. You’ll need to find the latest “snow depth” or “SWE change” values from the table. - For Lake Louise: hit the RSS endpoint (or any JSON/HTML endpoint if available) from the SkiLouise API to fetch the daily snowfall/24-hr change. - Store the previous reading each run (e.g., in a small database or plain file) so you can calculate delta (change) since last check.
# Threshold logic - Define what “new snow” means to you (e.g., 5 cm or more depth increase, or some other SWE change threshold). - Compare the latest data to previous reading → if delta ≥ threshold, trigger alert.
# Alert delivery - Choose your alert channel: email, push notification, Slack message, SMS, etc. - Include the resort name, time, depth change, maybe link to live webcam or conditions page.
# Schedule - Set your script to run once or twice daily (e.g., early morning when new data comes in). - If you own a small server or use AWS Lambda / Google Cloud Functions + schedule, that's a clean solution.
# Edge-cases / reliability - Ensure you handle missing data (e.g., early/late season when station not updating). - Might be good to fetch also the “resort‐reported overnight snowfall” from resort website as cross-check. For example SkiLouise says they report overnight, 24h, 48h values. Skilouise<ref>{{cite web|title=Skilouise|url=https://www.skilouise.com/things-to-do/how-we-report-snowfall-mountain-conditions/|publisher=skilouise.com|access-date=2026-01-19}}</ref> - Consider timezone / run time (Alberta MST/MDT) so you don’t miss the daily update window.

===== 🔍 Sample implementation (pseudo) =====

<syntaxhighlight lang="python"># pseudocode
DATA_URL_SUN = "https://www.nwrfc.noaa.gov/snow/snowplot.cgi?SUNQ1"
THRESHOLD_CM = 5

prev_depth = load_prev("sun_depth.txt")
latest = scrape_depth_from_url(DATA_URL_SUN)   # parse html, find “Snow Depth (inches)”, convert to cm

if latest - prev_depth >= THRESHOLD_CM:
    send_alert(f"Sunshine Village: {latest-prev_depth:.1f} cm new snow; total depth {latest:.1f} cm")
save_prev("sun_depth.txt", latest)

</syntaxhighlight>

And similarly for Lake Louise with its URL / RSS feed.

===== 🤔 Some caveats =====
* The station data for Sunshine is in inches in that NOAA page. For example it shows “Snow Depth (inches)”. nwrfc.noaa.gov<ref>{{cite web|title=nwrfc.noaa.gov|url=https://www.nwrfc.noaa.gov/snow/snowplot.cgi?SUNQ1=|publisher=nwrfc.noaa.gov|access-date=2026-01-19}}</ref> You’ll want to convert to cm if you prefer metric.
* The station may not exactly correspond to the same vertical terrain you ski on (though at Sunshine it looks like proper high-elevation station).
* Some resort reported “new snow” times might be slightly different than the raw station.
* Data availability: the NOAA page says “Please Note: Data provided by Alberta Environment and Parks” for Canadian stations. So the reliability is there but you must check whether updates are frequent. nwrfc.noaa.gov<ref>{{cite web|title=nwrfc.noaa.gov|url=https://www.nwrfc.noaa.gov/snow/snowplot.cgi?SUNQ1=|publisher=nwrfc.noaa.gov|access-date=2026-01-19}}</ref>

If you like, I can look up the direct URLs for both resorts’ data (for example JSON endpoints or RSS feeds) and help you craft a full script (in Python or whatever you prefer) to run this automation. Would you like me to dig that up?

== References ==
<references />


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