Northern New Mexico

At upper elevations, new snow and wind have created more cohesive slabs of snow on the surface that rest on top of faceted weak snow below.  Avoid steep slopes where you find more than 8 inches of wind-drifted snow, paying attention to obvious signs of instability like shooting cracks and loud audible collapses. Any avalanche triggered has the potential to fail on or near the ground taking with it most of the season's snowpack.  At lower elevations, where the snowpack is faceted from top to bottom, it's possible to get loose snow avalanches that gouge near the ground in steep terrain.  

Yesterday's storm came in early in the morning bringing a quick round of 2 to 4 inches of snow with SSE winds gusting in the 40 mph range. By mid-day the snow had mainly stopped and the winds decreased to the 5 - 15 mph range. Another pulse of snow came in last night bringing an additional 2 to 3 inches of low-density snow with light NW winds. Winds are expected to remain light today, but early this morning winds are increasing at upper elevations gusting in the 20 mph range.  It won't take much wind to drift the low-density new snow into more cohesive slabs.  

In travels yesterday at upper elevations, we found surface slabs becoming more reactive on the leeward sides of ridgelines and cross-loaded terrain features where winds were drifting snow into 10 - 20 cm slabs. Most test slopes we got on that had seen loading we were getting cracking and collapsing.  In stability tests where there was enough of a cohesive slab on the surface, we were able to get failure and propagation on deeper buried weak layers near the ground.     

The shallow snowpack has been continuing to weaken and facet over this last period of high pressure. Most slopes only have 2 to 3 feet of snow and lack any presence of a slab, with faceted (weak sugary) snow from top to bottom. The biggest hazards continue to be hitting rocks and downed trees and stumps on the ground. In steep terrain, it's possible to get loose snow avalanche "sluffs" that entrain and gouge this weak snow to the ground.  These loose snow avalanches are typically relatively harmless, but if you find yourself in consequential terrain, they could be big enough to take you off your feet. 

Looking ahead, it should be an active weather pattern over the next week.  A quick-moving system will bring another round of light snow tonight (1 to 3 inches).  On Saturday winds look to ramp up ahead of a  more significant storm system that is forecasted Sunday into Monday, with some models calling for upwards of a foot of snow. Another system behind that will bring more snow later on next week. Our weak and shallow snowpack most likely will struggle to hold much weight and we should see an increase in avalanche danger in the coming days.