Good snow can be found on shady, high elevation aspects. Sunny aspects are pleasant with ok snow quality. The choice is yours!
This problem is limited to immediate lee features, areas prone to downflow (cold air sinking) wind and immediately below large cliffs.
Be cautious for this layer in high alpine terrain. Thinner snowpack areas will be the places that this may be an issue.
No new avalanches directly observed today, however we left the field before the loose avalanches could have started.
We are still seeing little to no wind affect at almost all elevations. The one exception would be high alpine (2500m+) ridges where isolated slabs will exist in the immediate lee. At treeline and low alpine elevations there's 20-25cm's of nice, faceted snow resting on top of the Feb crust. The crust itself is generally supportive, but in the odd place at treeline its breakable and sometimes challenging to ski. From an avalanche perspective, the crust isn't posing a problem other than allowing the surface snow to sluff in very steep terrain. The deeper layers aren't changing much. They are still a mix of facets and the older crust from earlier in the year. We're also seeing moist snow develop on solar aspects at all elevations. There's a thin film of a crust on steep sunny slopes that is breaking down by mid afternoon.
Tonight's low will be around -15 with a high of -3 by 3pm. Skies will be cloudy, direct solar input will be limited but there may be a "greenhouse" effect from the high cloud. Winds will be light from the SW. Obviously no snow is expected tomorrow, unless we count overnight surface hoar development. Are we that desperate yet?
More details can be found in the Mountain Weather Forecast.
