Quick report
We found clear evidence of the recent NE wind event on the landscape, in the form of tree debris and wind slabs. SW facing slopes seemed to remain relatively unaffected. The ridgetops had wind slabs that varied in depth and hardness, and were limited in size because of the tree-cover along the ridge.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- broken
- Wind Loading
- moderate
Winds were light from the SW, cloud ceiling was around 7000ft then became clear after 4:00pm, no snowfall.
Snowpack
We dug 3 pits within a 500ft area at 6500 feet with SW, S, and E aspects and slope angle 20-30 degrees for all pits. The tree cover was open and showed signs of the previous strong N/NE winds. The SW aspect showed little signs of being affected by the wind event and held 6-8 inches of fresh snow with no reactivity. The E aspect showed surprisingly little evidence of wind and was not reactive, however it may have been sheltered by the north facing ridge just north of our site. We dug the S aspect pit into a ridgetop wind slab about 50cm thick (pencil hardness) which had limited reactivity (around ECTN25), but did propagate through the entire block along a loosely defined line in the weak layer below (50-70cm, fist hardness) under a weighted ski.