Quick report
- Red Flags
- Heavy Snowfall
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Quite a bit of water weight has been added to the snowpack. I'm curious if it will reactivate the patchy depth hoar locations, or if the warm temps during the first half of this storm (followed by some weight and colder temps) will serve to "lock up" the faceted snow at the bottom of the pack on the high north.</p>
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>With the various layers of graupel throughout the new snow, there were obvious discontinuities and easy shears in the top 30 cm of snow. I suspect this manifested itself in sensitive soft slabs on steeper terrain at the higher elevations that received the most snow. These will probably remain sensitive throughout tomorrow as the graupel slowly begins to bond in the snowpack.</p> <p>With the added water weight, one would suspect the activity in patchy depth hoar locations would increase. We didn't dig on the high N, so I'm curious to hear how that layer is reacting to this new weight. I'm sort of leaning towards the warm temperature thing that I explained earlier.</p>
Hmmm... hard to really call it powder today. How about "new snow"? By the time we were heading out, there was about 12 inches of heavy, dense new snow, interspersed with several layers of graupel. The riding was excellent! Words like 'creamy' and 'buttery' describe todays conditions. Trail breaking was a breeze(?) as well. This snow was just what the current snowpack needed to help solidify some sort of base.