We've from 0-60 miles/hour in the last couple of days. Little to no snowpack complexity, to a short but challenging period right now. Watch carefully for past and present wind transport and keep tabs on the layer the new snow is sitting on. Tread lightly as this change plays out. Oh...and dress warm, it's cold out there.
Lots of snow available for transport. Winds have been absent lately, but keep an eye out for wind loading. There are pockets of hidden windslabs from mid storm.
Surprising lack of activity overall. The one exception would be a size 2.5 above Spray Lake on the Goat Range. Open alpine bowl with a very erratic crown, and appeared to be blown in after the initial slide.
Our unexpected snow storm has left us with 20-30cm of settling snow. It seems we had intermittent wind last night that left pockets of localized windslab, which was subsequently buried. The wind pattern was random, its difficult to predict where the buried slabs may be. The bigger question is what is the storm snow sitting on. In a nutshell, it could be anything from a facet layer, to a sun crust, or even a hard windslab/wind crust. Tricky. For now, the loose snow is forgiving as there aren't widespread slabs. Beneath the Jan 30th interface the alpine snowpack is a series of old windslabs with loose facets between. The midpack is overall pretty good with a variety of facet layers, but nothing too troubling. At treeline we have 120-150cm of snow and treeline has just over meter. Valley bottom there about 80cm.
Now that this storm is over we can get to our cold snap. In case you've been under a rock, overnight temperatures are falling to the -30 range for the next few days. Daytime highs are more tolerable with highs of -20. We are expecting some flurries tomorrow, but expect minimal accumulation. Extreme cold and snow don't often go together in these parts. Winds will calm to light for the most part.
More details can be found in the Mountain Weather Forecast.
