Direct photogrammetry with multispectral imagery for UAV-based snow depth estimation

•A novel UAV-based snow depth retrieval method combining MSI imagery and direct georeferencing was tested in Northern Sweden.•The preprocessing routine improved the automatic feature detection in homogeneous snow areas generating 10× more key points.•The importance of red and NIR bands for 3D reconstruction of snow areas has been highlighted and quantified through PCA.•Snow depth maps were estimated with high accuracy (RSME 11.52 cm) for optimal illumination conditions.•The data set composed by UAV multispectral imagery, GNSS and IMU data, and ground validation is openly and freely available.