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To better monitor and understand precipitation processes in the Alberta foothills, the Foothills Orographic Precipitation Experiment (FOPEX) was initiated in August 2001, consisting of six meteorological sites installed in a 40 km east-west transect in west-central Alberta to measure precipitation between 1070 and 2120 m above sea level. There are significant linear correlations between monthly accumulated precipitation and elevation when precipitation exceeds 70% of the long term average, but these relationships break down when monthly precipitation drops below the 70% threshold. During the cold season and when precipitation is greater than 70% of the long term mean, the altitudinal increase of monthly precipitation shows a linear dependency on the total amount of precipitation observed. Between October and April inclusive (cold season), accumulated precipitation increases by 74% for every 1000 m rise in elevation. However, for the cold months when precipitation is under the 70% threshold, this scaling factor is reduced to 46%. Spatial and topographic variability in precipitation during the warm season (May to September) makes it difficult to develop such a scaling factor. Based on these precipitation-elevation relationships, a simple but effective model is presented to extrapolate precipitation to various elevations along the transect using precipitation measured at a single location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]