Lucille Snow Displacement Analysis

Today we went to the Lucille riding area to assess the effect of the weekend's warming and the new snow on the current snowpack. As we moved through the terrain, we observed many natural cornice failures that most likely fell in the past 48-72 hours, as well as a few older crowns that were getting filled in by the wind, but noticed no new avalanches from the past 24-48 hours. When we dug into the snow we found 24 cm of softer snow on the surface sitting on a layer of denser snow. This softer snow has been redistributed by wind at higher elevations. There is a melt freeze crust down 90 cm in the snowpack with facets sitting above it. We currently have no concerns with the mid and lower snowpack. In our snowpit tests we had a moderate and hard result on the crust/facet layer. At 1:00 pm at 2000 m the temperature was -9 and the wind was light-moderate from the SW at ridgetop. We observed snow transport at ridgetop, but nothing at lower elevations. We were happy to see the sun peaking out from the broken cloud cover throughout the day.