Quick report
- Red Flags
- Wind Loading, Collapsing, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>The strong winds was loading the east slopes, wind slabs have developed over the melt freeze crust and the faceted snow from earlier cold weather. The slab was solid but I moved about 10 feet to a softer slab and had a collapes of the weak layers. Was still finding areas were you could easly penatrate to the ground with a ski pole and other areas that were there was a hard slab but no collapsing. </p>
We had 15 cm of new snow with a total snow of 109 cm, the new snow was over the melt freeze crust from last week. The snow under the crust was 4 finger for 10 cm to the Jan. facet layer. Snow below this was 1 finger to the old snow from Nov. Compression test at the melt freeze crust was a CT8 and at the facet layer was a CT12 and a Q2. No failure on the extended test ( go figure).
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Lots of areas will be cross loaded with these wind, the concern will be areas that have the deep faceted snow and have not been affected by the earlier wind.</p> <p>This looks to be a storm to build good size cornices on the East and and North East aspects.</p>
Surface conditions were variable due to the strong winds, already saw a wind crust developing on North East slopes and ridge lines. A light amount of new snow was falling and were rimed stellars. The wind was from 5 to 10 miles an hour with gust to 15 from the wsw. This was at 9,000 feet on a sub-ridge.