easysnowdata

A Python package to easily retrieve data relevant to snow science.

easysnowdata unifies access to a wide range of snow-relevant geospatial datasets — weather stations, satellite imagery, climate reanalysis, DEMs, and more — under a consistent API that returns xarray objects. The emphasis is on minimising downloads and local computation by leveraging cloud-optimised data formats wherever possible.

Gallery

One executed script per product — browse them, each with the code, the figure and a downloadable notebook.

Data Source Status

Every route of every product is probed weekly. A failure opens an issue labelled data-source and a recovery closes it; latency and DMR++ readiness are on the status page.

Last updated: 2026-09-22 01:46 UTC
⚠️ = skipped (credentials not available in this run). Latency and virtualization probes are on the status page.

Stations (esd.stations)

Snow (esd.snow)

SAR (esd.sar)

Optical imagery (esd.optical)

Terrain (esd.terrain)

Land cover (esd.land)

Hydrography (esd.hydro)

Climate (esd.climate)

Installation

pip install easysnowdata

conda install -c conda-forge easysnowdata

mamba install -c conda-forge easysnowdata

Development install (with pixi)

git clone https://github.com/egagli/easysnowdata.git
cd easysnowdata
pixi install                          # sets up the environments
pixi run -e test-py313 test-unit      # offline tests (no network, no credentials)
pixi run -e test-py313 test-live      # live tests against the data providers (credentialed ones skip without secrets)
pixi run -e docs docs-serve           # preview the docs locally

Services that require account setup

Some data sources need free accounts and credentials passed as environment variables:

Planetary Computer and anonymous GCS access require no credentials.

What is in it

32 products across 8 themes, each with one or more access routes:

Every product's routes, resolution, credentials, licence and health are on its own page: https://egagli.github.io/easysnowdata/catalog/.

Quick Start

import easysnowdata as esd

aoi = (-121.94, 46.72, -121.54, 46.99)          # Mount Rainier; any AOI form works

# Snow stations: which are here, then one water year of observations
inv = esd.stations.inventory(aoi, daily_only=True)
obs = esd.stations.load(inv, variables=["swe", "snwd"], time="2023-10/2024-09")

# Terrain, SAR and snow water equivalent — lazy, Dask-backed, CRS attached
dem = esd.terrain.dem.load(aoi)                             # Copernicus GLO-30 (default)
dem = esd.terrain.dem.load(aoi, product="3dep")             # or NASADEM, SRTM, 3DEP, ALOS
s1 = esd.sar.sentinel1.load(aoi, "2024-03", units="dB")     # Sentinel-1 RTC
swe = esd.snow.snodas.load(aoi, "2024-03")                  # SNODAS, no account

# Optical, masked, and a snow index written out rather than hidden in a helper
s2 = esd.optical.sentinel2.load(aoi, "2024-03", mask="scl-default")
ndsi = (s2["green"] - s2["swir16"]) / (s2["green"] + s2["swir16"])

# Maps with equal aspect, a scale bar and a graticule; legends from CF flags
esd.plotting.map(dem, cmap="terrain")
esd.plotting.categorical(esd.land.landcover.load(aoi))
esd.plotting.timeseries(obs["swe"])                         # calendar dates, units in [ ]

# What is available, and what it needs
esd.catalog.search("swe")
esd.catalog.describe("snodas")
esd.auth.status()

Coming from 0.0.x? The old module API (remote_sensing.get_*, automatic_weather_stations.StationCollection, …) was deprecated in 0.2 and removed in 0.3; the migration guide maps every old name to its replacement.

Documentation

Executed example gallery, data catalog and API reference: https://egagli.github.io/easysnowdata

Contributing

Contributions welcome! See CONTRIBUTING for guidelines.

Citing

If you use easysnowdata in your research, please cite the Zenodo archive: