Jesse Nichols, Author at Grist (original) (raw)
Articles by Video Producer Jesse Nichols
Jesse Nichols is a video producer covering science at Grist, where he has worked since 2017. Nichols produces the award-winning Grist series, Proof of Concept, and contributes multimedia reporting to Grist’s coverage. He lives in Seattle.
Toby Rodgers, a hydrologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resource Conservation Service, takes a sample of snow in Washington's Cascade mountains.
On a snowy February morning, Toby Rodgers strapped on a pair of snowshoes and trudged across a snowy field in Washington’s Cascade mountains. Rodgers, a hydrologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, had traveled into the mountains that morning to sample snow. He had also brought along something unusual looking: a long aluminum tube, with a sharp serrated bit on the end.
When he reached his destination, Rodgers carefully positioned the tube in front of him, then quickly drove the tube into the ground. Then, he pulled the snow-filled tube out of the ground, and weighed it on a spring scale. From this simple measurement, Rodgers could get a sense of how much snow was in the mountains — and how much water might be in the rivers, lakes, and reservoirs downstream when it melts in the summer.
The tube that Rodgers used is called the Church Sampler. And while it’s super-simple and low-tech, it’s arguably one of the most influential devices ever ... Read more
Hello everyone, and welcome back to State of Emergency. I’m Jesse Nichols, a video producer and reporter at Grist, and today we’re going to be talking about how worsening climate impacts are raising the profile of a largely overlooked section on state ballots: The race for insurance commissioner. If you watched the presidential debate earlier […]