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.