Quick report
No cracking or collapsing in the middle elevation terrain where I travelled in a short outing today. Without wind-loading, there wasn't enough of a slab for avalanche concerns where I was. There is weak snow buried below the 8" of storm snow, primarily on the northern half of the compass. This will be a concern in wind-loaded terrain as the storm ramps up and could become a problem in sheltered terrain, depending on how the storm plays out.
Weather
- Air Temp
- 20s
- Cloud Cover
- broken
- Wind Loading
- none
- Recent Snowfall
- 20
- Snow Avail For Transport
- moderate amounts
Partly to mostly cloudy skies with very light snow showers while I was out. Light winds, but squalls moved through and blew snow out of trees. New snowfall of 20cm = storm snow from the past few days.
Snowpack
Goal was to observe surfaces and the 3/12 interface / crusts / FC.
Surfaces: no significant weak snow at current surface.
3/12: On SW-S-SE, there was a very stout, 10-20cm thick frozen crust under the ~20cm of storm snow. Moving from SE to E, at about 95 degrees there were 2 crusts with some dry FC in between them. The upper crust was K hard and about 5cm thick, the lower crust was <1cm thick, and there were perc columns in the FC in between the crusts. On SW-ESE, the top of the upper crust was quite rough everywhere I looked - the new snow did not want to shear cleanly above the crust.
3/12 on E-NE: This was more interesting. As you moved N on the compass from 95 degrees, the upper crust thinned and the lower of the 2 crusts dissappeared around 75 degrees (just N of due east). From 60 degrees and north, the crusts were gone. The ugliest crust + FC combo was on 60-70 degrees aspects (E-NE), with the potential failure on dry FC below the crust: ECTP15, ECTN13, ECTN16. Although the crust was K hard, it was brittle and inconsistent. Overall, the crust+FC structure on the margins wasn't great on a 10-15 degree wedge of the compass (E-NE). On NE apects, there were some decent FC beneath the storm snow.
Photos are a pit on E-NE (70 degrees) around 8400', where the ECT tests were performed.