Warm temps are helping to settle our current snowpack but its going to take a long time before we have any confidence in it. Expect to be wallowing in facets at lower elevations up to treeline as the snowpack is weak. The deep persistent problems are hard to predict and can have big consequences if triggered.
If triggered the persistent slab is very likely to steep down to the deeper instability and involve the entire winter's snowpack.
This layer is easy to trigger from thin, weak shallow areas.
Avalanche Control on Friday surprisingly produced minimal results which gave forecasters an uneasy feeling that this is a complex tricky snowpack.
Large surface hoar was found today up to 2200m. This may be a layer to watch in the future.
Otherwise not much is changing in the snowpack (and that's not a good thing!). The mid-December surface hoar layer down 30cm at Treeline is reacting as a persistent slab with compression tests in the moderate range. Below this, the remainder of the snowpack is heavily facetted. Any avalanche triggered in the upper snowpack will almost certainly step down to the ground.
Forecasters are approaching all terrain conservatively and do not have much confidence in the snow pack, as it's one of the worst we've seen in many, many years.
One day i will get to write in here "Up to 20cm" but unfortunately, that wont be today, or tomorrow.... or for a while.
Ridge of surface high pressure dominates over the Continental Divide. Mix of sun and cloud. Southwest ridgetop around 50 to 60 km/hin the KC region. Gusts up to 70 km/h through valley gaps across the Rockies in the morning east of the high pressure ridge. Freezing levels at valley bottom. Alpine temperatures near -5°C to -10°C.
More details can be found in the Mountain Weather Forecast.
