For many Californians, winter means snow. But alongside the skiers, snowboarders and snowshoers awaiting the latest weather forecasts, there’s another group of snow obsessives in our state: snow scientists. They measure California’s snowpack every day in order to better predict our statewide water supply for the coming year. Some of the most cutting-edge work in this field is being done by a tiny lab hidden in a rustic cabin in the Tahoe National Forest, and it’s a place that also houses a big secret. KQED’s Carly Severn headed up there to see it for herself.

And we meet the San Diego band Al Akhbar. The band combines instrumentation and rhythms of the Middle East with western jazz. And they’re not only preserving their Middle Eastern musical traditions, but also reinventing them. As The California Report Magazine’s intern Hussain Khan explains, they’re bringing audiences from diverse backgrounds together with their unique sound. 

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