Abstract. This paper presents the concepts needed to perform snow surface thermography with a modern thermal imager. Snow-specific issues in the 7.5 to 13 μm spectrum such as ice emissivity, photographic angle, operator heating, and others receive detailed review and discussion. To illustrate the usefulness of this measurement technique, various applications are presented. These include detecting spatial temperature variation on snow pit walls and measuring the dependence of heat conduction on grain type.