Paul Ridge

From 6pm on December 30th - 8am on December 31st there was a further 16cm's of storm snow measured at Elfin Lakes. Storm snow amounts from December 29th range from 40-60cms. Moderate southerly winds have created deeper pockets of storm snow (up to 1m) in lee terrain features. The storm snow has formed a soft slab and continued to do so throughout today with warm temperatures, moderate winds and riming. The storm snow is sitting on a 30cm thick supportive crust / saturated polycrystal layer.

Foggy, snowy and warm day. Trees and elfin pole route heavily rimed. Snowed a few cm's throughout today and cleared late-afternoon.

We dug a test profile on a NW facing slope at 1560m today and found easy to moderate sudden planer compression test results within the storm snow down 30, and hard sudden planar compression test results on the crust layer down 65. No obs below the crust. We suspect the easy compression test results were on a storm snow interface that formed when temperatures increased on the afternoon of Dec 30th.