Quick report
- Cracking
- widespread
- Collapsing
- specific
Widespread cracking in any and all wind slabs.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 20
- Cloud Cover
- obscured
- Wind Loading
- intense
- Rain Elevation
- n/app
- Recent Snowfall
- 15
- Snow Avail For Transport
- large amounts
Light S1 snowfall and south winds during the first half of the day. At about 1400, winds shifted dramatically towards the southeast/east. With it came a big increase in snowfall rates to S5 or 2+ inches per hour even at low elevations.
Snowpack
On Ward, I was surprised at how little low and mid-elevation snow there was. Coverage improved significantly towards the upper elevation, but the price for access was high!
At the beginning of the day, there were 6 inches of new snow from the past 24 hours. By the time I left the field at 1500, another 3-4 inches had fallen. The driving factor for instability today is the wind. Strong shifting winds are actively transporting all the new snow into wind slabs on all aspects. Whether the slab was collapsing or failing on the wind slab interface or a persistent weak layer within the top of the snowpack is inconclusive.
The most important takeaway from today is that wind transport is the driving factor behind slab formation, and peak avalanche instability or danger is directly correlated to where the wind is depositing the snow. With the shifting winds, this problem is on all aspects at the upper elevation.