Nunatak reports snow depth in observer-relative units. An “easy 20 cm” of overnight accumulation is quoted with boisterous confidence, and 8 cm is later measured at the trailhead (median overstatement 2.2×). To combat this, informal snowfall reporting in the Eastern Alps has long been conducted by anatomical comparison, however inter-observer variance is large, uncharacterised and, in our studies, biased upward at the moment of reporting (median overstatement 1.3×).
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Field trials found that users who had declared a reference length overstated snow depth markedly less often. Among those who had not, when asked about the discrepancy, the cold was the reason most commonly cited.