Quick report
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>A period of moderate to strong north and northeast winds the last two days developed some fairly sensitive, but shallow wind slabs on the south through southwest facing slopes. This is a bit unusual to see the wind drifting on these aspects. </p>
A nice cold morning made for good supportable riding with about 6" new snow the last couple days. This new snow is capping-off a couple layers of melt freeze crusts with damp snow in-between. Once your sled breaks through these crusts and into the damp layers, its just bottomless wet snow and no base.
These shallow wind slabs found on south through southwest slopes this morning were sensitive, but with the day time heating these settled out. I would think a few more of these could be possible to trigger tomorrow with more north and northeast winds forecasted.
The exits back to the rigs are starting to get a little rough, this stretch of road was white when I went through in the morning.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Some shallow, but sensitive wind slabs today on unusual south through southwest aspects. These were only 10-12" deep, maybe 30-50' wide and not entraining a lot of snow as they moved down hill. These became less of an issue as the wind mellowed some and the warm weather helped to settle things out. </p> <p>Very little in the way of wet loose activity, the winds from the north kept things from getting too warm and reactive. </p>
Looks like the storm put down about 6" of medium density snow in the Whitney area with mostly supportable snow this morning.