Quick report
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Cracking, Rapid Warming, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Low elevations: just about every north facing gully from the canyon mouth to Red Pine had slid at least once. Wet loose slides.</p> <p>Upper elevations: cracking and poor structure on northerly facing slopes.</p>
Photos of the needles that were falling. They generally form in warm, super saturated conditions, which fits yesterday's upper elevation conditions. Second photo of riming occurring on a tree branch, though I was not finding any riming on the snow surface.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Checked out the snow at a couple low elevation spots from the mouth to about 7600' - damp punchy snow snow, where you can sink all the way to the ground. Saturday, the widespread natural cycle may be about over, with just isolated naturals possible. Human triggered slides will still be possible on steep slopes. In the longer term, this heating is great - once there is more settlement and cooling, the lower elevations will have a strong snowpack.</p> <p>The below snow pit and test result is an example of where there is now a slab sitting on the weak, upper most January near surface facet layer. The dense new snow, while shallow and not having much weight, does have slab characteristics, and the weak layer/slab combo was able to propagate a fracture. </p> <p>The variability of the snow pack has increased greatly at the upper elevations during the January dry spells. There are now a surprising number of shallow areas that seem to be pockety, but are faceted to the ground.</p>
The new snow varied widely by elevation. Dense, loose powder above about 9,500 feet, damp snow below.