Here's how to find out how much water content the snow has and how much water is sitting on the ground.
First: Stick a ruler in a flat open spot without drifts if you can.
Second: Put a rain gauge upside down straight down into the snowpack. I have 2 rain gauges as seen here just to make it easier to do hourly catches.. You can use any rain gauge to do this. (Might be harder when there is a lot of snow to cram the snow into the smaller gauge)
Third: Have a spatula ready
Forth: with the spatula cut out a section in front of the gauge so you don't accidently get more snow in there when you slide the spatula underneath.
Fifth: Stick the spatula underneath it, where the opening to the rain gauge is. Hold the spatula and the bottom of rain gauge and flip right side up.
You're left with this... A nice snow core.
Now the fun part. Bring it inside. Have pen, paper, and calculator ready.
If you are using a smaller gauge and only have 1, then you need to be patient and wait for it to melt. Use a hairdryer maybe or put near heat source.
If you have 2 gauges. This is the method..
Fill up the inner tube with warm water (or your second rain gauge MUST BE THE SAME TYPE)
Write down how much warm water you put in the gauge with the snow in it. Keep doing this until you have enough to melt all the snow down to liquid. Stir it so warm water mixes around.
Not done yet.
It took 4 inner tube warm water fills to melt it. Now, the next fun part. Lets start measuring.
Just use the funnel and inner tube and keep writing down all the measurments.
This is what I got. Numbers on the far right was the warm water added. Numbers to left of that is the entire water content. Subtract the warm water added and you get how much water the snow core was. 1.35" sitting on the ground.
Hope this helps. It's fun and it really doesn't take long to do unless you only have 1 gauge.
You can do it for any amount of snow obviously.