Quick report
- Cracking
- isolated
- Collapsing
- isolated
Localized cracking and limited test slope results in stubborn storm snow near and below treeline, primarily where the wind had drifted it overnight. Isolated collapses above 9900 near treeline on a layer deeper in the snowpack.
Weather
- Air Temp
- Below Freezing and decreasing throughout the day.
- Cloud Cover
- scattered
- Wind Loading
- intense
- Recent Snowfall
- 30
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
Overcast skies and moderate snow cleared out, and skies became mostly sunny by about 8 am. Temperatures appeared to drop throughout the day. Winds were strong-extreme this morning but dropped significantly mid-morning, becoming moderate near and below treeline. Continuous moderate to intense blowing snow near and above treeline across the whole range, at least south of Mammoth, all day.
Snowpack
New snow from overnight formed 4F to 1F styrofoam slabs over a thick, K hard crust from the wet storm on 2/1. These slabs were thicker on leeward slopes.
The hard crust thins to about 3 cm and becomes just a stiff (P) layer of rounds around 9800 ft. It extended higher than we got to: 10,200 ft.
There are weak facets beneath the crust that was buried last night, and more, well developed facets mid-pack.
The new snow had graupel in it, that those styrofoam balls were the primary surface grain on northerly slopes. Southerly slopes were often stripped back down to the rain crust or formed a thin melt-freeze crust during the sunny part of the day.
Avalanche
- Size
- D2.5
- Type
- U
- Aspect
- NE
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 10400 ft
We observed a very large slab avalanche in the Jaws area today. This likely occurred during the loading event on the night of 2/4. Details are all estimates- I would guess this was a natural avalanche with a crown depth over 3' and was likely a D2.5-D3 in size. This may have started as a windslab. However, the wide propagation connecting terrain features and following along the bottom of cliff bands and rock features suggest this avalanche likely ran on persistent grains.