Quick report
Poor Structure.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 25
- Cloud Cover
- scattered
- Wind Loading
- previous
- Recent Snowfall
- Trace
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Scattered clouds and temps in the mid 20's. Calm to very light winds out of the WSW.
Snowpack
A mixed bag of snowpack depths above 8000'. It was kind of a smorgasbord of snow surface conditions out there. Everything from bare and rocky ridgelines, to cornices on the East aspects, wind crusts, sun crusts, and soft settled powder on protected lower angle northerlies. Surface hoar (up to 4 mm) had developed overnight in most locations above 7,000'. The surface hoar is sitting on a sun or wind crust in many exposed locations. The clouds prevented the sun from destroying it throughout the day, and I would expect it to be intact and reactive when we add some new snow on top of it in the next couple of days.
I dug a pit on a NW aspect at 8100'. The Rain Crust that was buried on Feb. 1st was found down 45 cms/1.5' and was about 1" thick. The January 4th Interface was down 70 cms/28" from the surface. In an Extended Column Test, the column failed and propagated on the 15th tap at a depth of 85cm on well-developed facets near the bottom of the snowpack.