radioactive snow gage

radioactive snow gage

[¦rād·ē·ō′ak·tiv ′snō ‚gāj] (engineering) A device which automatically and continuously records the water equivalent of snow on a given surface as a function of time; a small sample of a radioactive salt is placed in the ground in a lead-shielded collimator which directs a beam of radioactive particles vertically upward; a Geiger-Müller counting system (located above the snow level) measures the amount of depletion of radiation caused by the presence of the snow.