(Bloomberg Business) — A team of scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is tracking California's snowpack levels aboard a flying laboratory.

It's called the Airborne Snow Observatory—a Beachcraft King Air turboprop plane with two key instruments on board measuring how much snow is on the ground through a hole in the belly of the aircraft.

Snowpack supplies about 70 percent of California's annual precipitation, according to NASA, making it crucial to the water supply of a state that's experiencing a four-year drought.

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