Quick report
- Red Flags
- Heavy Snowfall, Wind Loading, Cracking, Poor Snowpack Structure
The cold front and snow came in right on time around 8:30am with strong winds and dropping temperatures. I was planning on the wind easing off after frontal passage but it continued to blow in the strong category transporting the new snow rapidly in unprotected terrain and on the high ridge lines. There was some localized cracking in the new snow during the high PI rates but nothing alarming. I was mostly on E and SE but I would think the new snow would sluff easily on steep N with the surface facets from the last week now buried. I was thinking that this storm would not provide much of a load but with the combination of high winds, and some medium density snow it might have loaded some upper elevation slopes enough to cause avalanches, guess we will find out tomorrow. Visibility was extremely limited while I was out so I couldn’t really tell what was going on at a distance.
only photo I got today is of it snowing and blowing
Hazards a tough call right now, it seems that the lake might have kicked in while I’m writing this around 5pm, we’ll haft to wait and see what snow and water amounts end up being, and I think the wind speeds will be a large factor in figuring out tomorrow’s hazard
Snowpack
I say the new snow was medium low density with stelars mixed in with some graupel. Hard to tell exact amounts due to wind transport.