Northern San Juan

While numerous avalanches were observed following the wind event, nearly all were small and involved only the new storm snow.

Cold morning, with -8* at the house. Temps slowly warmed into the teens. Calm to light winds and clear skies.

On many shady slopes below treeline, the new snow is sitting over cohesionless facets to the ground. In some places, the Christmas crust remains an insulator from the bottom, but in the very shallow or very shaded areas, the crust has been disintegrated by faceting and it's easy to sink to the bottom of the snowpack. It's also easy to get the entire snowpack to sluff downhill on very steep shaded slopes. Near treeline, the snowpack has more structure and retains a stout wind slab/crust formed by winds back in December and capped by rain on Christmas. This thick, pencil-hard layer has been observed in many snowpits this winter, and it doesn't seem to be losing strength. It sits directly above well-developed facets and depth hoar to the ground. In tests near treeline, the new snow did not exhibit any slab character and appeared to be bonding to the old surface (small near-surface facets, in this case). A little more of a slab in the new snow and things would be more reactive with cracking and collapsing, but cold and clear weather will continue to weaken the new snow via faceting.