Quick report
- Red Flags
- Heavy Snowfall, Wind Loading, Cracking, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Did see some cracking, not too many shooting cracks. The unsupportable rain saturated snow under the new snow was the biggest concern/red flag to me yesterday evening. The winds were blowing, transporting snow and forming the new dense snow into slabs. Would expct there to be some wind slabs lingering around on Friday, espically in some crossloaded areas. Not too confident that the cooler temps yesterday and last night will have locked up the saturated snowpack that I was seeing at least up to 10,300. Would think we will need at least 2 full days to lock that mess up.</p>
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>This became a concern of mine as I saw how high, and how deep into the pack the rain saturated goo was. Would think this problem will hopefully diminish very soon with the cooler temps and if the water was able to drain out through the pack.</p> <p>Definitely saw some wind slabs in the making yesterday. They are living along upper ridge lines as well as cross loaded ribs/ridges.</p>
New snow was fairly dense and mixed throughout with graupel. The snow was definitely moving around like it was graupel, but there was quite a bit of regular precip particles. Old snow underneath was completely rain saturated, and you could punch your pole through as far as you wanted. Skiing <35* was fairly pleasant. You could stay on top of the new snow with fat skis. Much steeper than that started to punch through into the mush.