Quick report
- Red Flags
- Heavy Snowfall, Wind Loading, Cracking, Collapsing, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Couldn't be a whole lot more obvious...</p>
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>The cracking and collapsing were top notch today- thunderous collapses and cracks shooting 100' easily. The strange thing was that we couldn't get anything to move- kept coming up on slopes thinking this one will slide for sure, big collapse, shooting cracks, cut a cornice, nothing. We weren't in very steep terrain, but it was easily avalanche terrain, several slopes mid to high 30's, obvious avalanche paths, and we couldn't get anything to move. Still, we're no dummies, we kept our exposure to a minimum, but still... maybe some friction at the interface from the storm coming in so warm? Digging down in it looked like most of the collapsing was in the NSF from before this storm, and depth of cracks/new snow were routinely up to 2 feet.</p>
Small rimed fragments with strong winds made for dense surface slabs in deposition zones and lots of areas scoured to the ground. The dense slabs overlay lower density NSF with a very noticeable "upside-down" feel. The patchwork of scouring and deposition made it very difficult to make an average HS estimation.