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'7f{/D '--9. 10. 11. 12. ,/!i) -no 15. UTAH (~ $.iD '18. 19. 20. e e Grand. Mesa east of Grand Junction Sawatch Range east of Crested Butte Monarch Pass area east of Gunnison Cochetopa Hills southeast of Gunnison Cimarron Ridge area southeast of Montrose Uncompahgre Plateau west of Montrose Central San Juans around Silverton Southwestern San Juans northwest of Durango Boulder Mountain north of Escalante Wasatch Plateau east of Mt. Pleasant Unita Mtns. (east end) northwest of Vernal Fishlake Mtns. southeast of Richfield La Sal Mts. east of Moab WYOMING 21. Wyoming Range west of Big Piney ARIZONA ~2. /2~J '-----'- White Mtns. southwest of Springerville Chuska Mtns. on Arizona-New Mexico border north of Gallup, New Mexico Table 2 presents several considerations for rating the above potential experimental areas. They are presented in their approximate order of importance, although the ranking is somewhat relative and interdependent. For example, strong and widespread opposition to an experiment by local residents very likely would eliminate the area from consideration no matter what its physical and operational virtues. In similar fashion, frequent high avalanche danger for a major highway could beco;m.e the most important factor for a particular mountain barrier. Status of the category "kIiown strong societal oppositi~n" is unknown for several areas. Unless seeding has been proposed or actually practiced, local acceptance is usually an open question. No attempt was made to rate the frequency of suitable storm events. The most important information needed in such an assessment, the presence and amounts of SL W, has been measured at a limited number of locations and usually only for 2-3 month periods. It appears that the distribution of hourly mean values of SL W is quite similar for the Black Hills of South Dakota, the Grand Mesa of Colorado, the Wasatch Plateau and Tushar Mountains of Utah, and the Mogollon Rim of Arizona. However, data are too limited to make any long-term comparisons of seasonal SLW conditions over the entire Basin. Super and Reynolds (1991) discussed estimates of storm total SLW flux over the Tushar Mountains and the Mogollon Rim and found similar distributions. They also noted a positive correlation between storm total SLW flux and storm total precipitation. This indicates that the larger snowstorms tend to produce the larger SLW fluxes across the two mountain barriers that were studied. Large storms may be very efficient in producing 7