Infilled daily precipitation data for Saddle, 1981 - ongoing.

As part of its long-term climate data core collection, the Niwot
Ridge LTER has collected daily precipitation at the Saddle site
since 1981. The Saddle station is located at 3525 m.a.s.l. and is an
important point location to capture local, ambient meteorological
conditions for many biological and environmental datasets collected
nearby. The location of the Saddle station has also presented
challenges to its operation. Freezing temperatures, snow deposition
from strong winds following storms, and exposure to lightning are
some elements that have disrupted instrument functionality, affected
data quality, and made access for research staff difficult over
time, especially in winter months.

Here we present a quality-controlled, gap-filled, daily
precipitation time series corrected for blowing snow overcatch at
the Saddle station. Methods follow those used to gap-fill long-term
daily precipitation at the Niwot Ridge LTER D1 and C1 stations so
there is consistency among core collection daily precipitation
datasets. Metadata for this data package centralizes the most
complete station history for Saddle precipitation and includes notes
to data users on aspects and limitations of the dataset to consider
when using these data in scientific analyses. Because of unresolved
data quality concerns with winter precipitation the first several
years of the record, gap-filled data for winter months (October–May)
1981-10-01 through 1987-05-30 are removed.