DENVER — This winter and spring have produced Colorado’s worst snowpack on record, often measured via weather stations throughout the high country known as SNOpack TELemetry or SNOTEL stations.

Over the last few years, a new kind of complimentary measurement has been taking off — literally.

What started as a NASA Jet Propulsion Lab research project became Airborne Snow Observations (ASO), a company that flies small planes over the mountains to measure the snowpack. Starting in 2015, a joint effort with the state began to deploy the technology and put it to work.

Denver7 got a look at the technology last year.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Airborne lasers are measuring Colorado’s snowpack, and the technology is taking off

The planes use light detection and ranging (LiDAR) systems to measure the depth of the snowpack across an entire basin, as well as spectrometers that measure how reflective the snow is to determine how fast it is melting.

“The holistic perspective is an important one,” ASO Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Jeffrey Deems said. “And by that I mean not just the full basin perspective on the snowpack, but how that snowpack evolves with our changing forests, the subsurface hydrology, soil moisture and groundwater. All of this adds up to what our managers and what we ultimately see in our rivers, behind our dams and in our reservoirs and in our taps.”

Through the Colorado Airborne Snow Measurement (CASM) program, ASO works with more than 100 water management partners ranging from small irrigation districts to large utilities like Denver Water. Deems said the more nuanced data helps those groups decide how to manage reservoirs or water restrictions.

Deems, who lives in Carbondale, said ASO’s flights cover 16 watersheds in Colorado.

“The full basin perspective is really showing us that there’s parts of the watershed that have more snow than others, and that information can really help managers on the ground anticipate what parts of their watershed or what diversion structures or what reservoirs are going to have better inflow versus other parts of the basin,” Deems explained. “That granularity can really help them out come operations time, now.

“The less [water] you have, the more you need to know about it,” he added.

Broader perspective ‘actually even more dire’

Deems said this year, ASO had to move flights up earlier than usual because the snowpack peaked early and began to rapidly melt. He said ASO did 18 survey flights in just one week in March.

Data from those flights show the huge drop off in snowpack this year compared to last.

• Watch the full story in the video player below.

Water managers getting a birds-eye view of CO’s historically bad snowpack

“In some cases, the full basin perspective is actually even more dire than what we’re seeing from the [SNOTEL] station network this time of year,” Deems said. “With early melt, those stations are still protected in their little forest pockets and aren’t melting as fast as the more open areas. So we’re seeing perhaps faster declines in the snowpack, and less overall than the stations would indicate in some areas.”

“In other basins, we’re seeing that there’s still a good bit of high elevation snow up there, similar to last year. So not that last year was a huge runoff year, but in some parts of the watersheds, not quite as dire,” he added.

The airborne observation technology is gaining more continuity in the state, with the CASM network expanding.

“And then just last year, a brand new program within the Colorado Water Conservation Board really takes that stakeholder-led effort and creates a state program,” Deems explained. “Having that background of a lot of years of working with these data in different parts of the state really helps with that confidence moving forward, so that folks know how to apply it and how to look to these data in times of crisis, like right now.”

Denver7 | Your Voice: Get in touch with Ryan Fish

Denver7’s Ryan Fish covers stories that have an impact in all of Colorado’s communities, but specializes in covering artificial intelligence, technology, aviation and space. If you’d like to get in touch with Ryan, fill out the form below to send him an email.

That headline is something many of us never expected to read. This April 22, 2026, is the day Hawaiian Airlines officially ends. Alaska’s reservation system takes over, Hawaiian flight numbers disappear, and all operations move to Alaska. Hawaiian joins the oneworld alliance too on the same day, but for Hawaii travelers, the alliance is not the headline. The airline you knew will cease to exist as part of the process that began with Alaska’s purchase of Hawaiian on December 3, 2023.

You can still board a plane painted with the iconic Pualani on the tail, but you will not book an HA flight anymore. Your confirmation email shows AS (Alaska). Your boarding pass shows AS. What airport departure boards and gate screens display on day one is a separate question. That and more will be revealed later.

When the code disappears, not the paint.

The Hawaiian call sign already ended last fall, when HA866 flew from Pago Pago to Honolulu on October 29, 2025, closing out 95 years of Hawaiian flight numbers in the sky. Call signs are largely for pilots and air traffic control, and most travelers never really see them. April 22 is entirely different because flight numbers exist on your itinerary, your receipt, your screenshot, and your email, and when HA disappears from those, you see it.

What booking Hawaiian looks like after April 22.

Customer service interactions will route entirely through Alaska’s systems. Schedule changes, irregular operations, rebooking rules, and automated notifications follow Alaska’s logic, and frequent travelers will notice these differences first.

A huge reservation system change is happening behind the scenes.

April 22 is also when Alaska’s reservation system replaces what remains of Hawaiian’s Amadeus platform, which has been degraded since the 2023 Sabre-to-Amadeus migration went sideways, infuriating its customers. The cutover is supposed to resolve years of booking infrastructure problems. But we’re keeping in mind that system migrations at this scale have historically created turbulence before they stabilize, so patience may still be required.

Branding stays, for now.

The visual identity remains intact on April 22. Pualani stays on the tail, uniforms stay recognizable, and the onboard experience does not change that day. Alaska has acknowledged that Hawaiian branding carries value in Hawaii, but Alaska has not committed to how much of it stays or how long. Everything past the paint is already Alaska.

The oneworld alliance arrives on the same day.

April 22 is also the day Hawaiian becomes a full member of the oneworld alliance. International lounge access improves, elite status recognition lines up across partner airlines, and earning and redeeming miles across oneworld carriers becomes far easier. Hawaiian did not have that before and had limited partners on its own. Under Alaska, it does have, for the first time, a robust partner network.

Atmos status is part of the oneworld structure wherein Silver aligns with oneworld Ruby, Gold with oneworld Sapphire, and Platinum and Titanium with oneworld Emerald. For travelers who qualify, that means priority services and lounge access when flying internationally. Alliance benefits may work best outside of Hawaii for now, as many of you have noted.

What Alaska has promised next for Hawaii.

Alaska has announced a $600 million investment covering airport renovations at five Hawaii airports, a full A330 cabin refit starting in 2028, and a new flagship lounge at Honolulu in late 2027. All twenty-four A330s are set to receive a new business class in a 1-2-1 layout with privacy doors and direct aisle access, replacing the dated 2-2-2 configuration.

The same design team behind the 787 soft product is said to be handling the A330, and the refit was quoted as rolling out across the entire fleet over roughly 12 months starting in January 2028. A true premium economy cabin comes with it, separate from Extra Comfort, and extra legroom. Extra Comfort rebrands to Alaska Premium Class on April 22 as an Alaska alignment, but the new premium economy class does not arrive until sometime in 2028.

The Honolulu lounge will expand to roughly five times the current Plumeria Lounge footprint at the Terminal 1 Mauka Concourse entrance. Beat of Hawaii has covered that new Honolulu Atmos Lounge separately. None of these upgrades changes anything significant if you are flying Hawaiian anytime soon.

What happens to the A321neo, A330, and the 717 interisland fleet long term under Alaska is a separate question. Beat of Hawaii has been covering that.

But Hawaiian had been running out of runway long before Alaska arrived, and the acquisition is the reason there is still a Pualani tail flying to Hawaii at all. What Alaska does with the paint, the brand, and the Hawaii routes from here is the part we’ll continue watching.

Courtesy KIVI

BURLEY (KIVI) — A woman from Burley says the job she once loved became hostile after she returned from maternity leave. She is now sharing her story exclusively with Idaho News 6 as new data shows a rise in workplace discrimination claims across the state.

Hannah Jones says she has worked as a deputy at the Mini-Cassia County Criminal Justice Center for over three years and enjoyed the job before returning from leave.

“It was humiliating, and it seemed really discrediting,” Jones said.

Jones said she initially had a positive experience at work.

“I love my job. I have gotten to meet a ton of really cool people,” she said.

She said that quickly changed after she returned from maternity leave, when she began hearing comments about breastfeeding.

“I came back, and it was only almost immediate that I started getting some pretty embarrassing comments about me breastfeeding and me having to go to the bathroom to pump,” Jones said.

Jones said supervisors made repeated comments in front of others.

“They would make comments about how I was a cow and … they would actually make mooing noises at me as I was walking through the hallways and stuff as well in front of inmates and other agencies,” she said.

She also described a more explicit comment from a supervisor.

“One of my male supervisors claimed that he thought I should have responded to a fight with my ‘titties’ out,” Jones said.

Jones said that when she reported the behavior, she felt it was not taken seriously and that she later experienced retaliation.

“I just felt like it wasn’t taken seriously at all,” she said.

She said she filed complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Idaho Human Rights Commission, which she says found in her favor.

Jones has since filed a lawsuit alleging sexual harassment and gender discrimination, detailing the same claims she shared with Idaho News 6.

“I started experiencing what I believe to be retaliation … and that’s the point that it kind of got to be too much,” she said.

Her case reflects a broader trend, according to the Idaho Human Rights Commission.

“In the last year, we’ve seen a doubling of the reports of discrimination,” said Ben Earwicker, administrator for the Idaho Human Rights Commission.

Earwicker said the increase includes cases involving pregnancy and motherhood.

“So postpartum is protected, breastfeeding … reasonable accommodations for those, including private spaces to breastfeed, including time off as needed,” he said.

He said retaliation is also a common claim.

“Retaliation is a much easier claim to prove because usually there’s temporal proximity where the initial reporting of discrimination occurs followed almost immediately by some kind of retaliatory action,” Earwicker said.

Jones said the experience has changed how she views her career and worries it could discourage other women from entering law enforcement.

“I feel my heart break for women that are coming into the force, knowing that that’s probably going to happen to them too,” she said.

Jones’ lawsuit is ongoing. The legal firm representing the Cassia County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to a request for comment.