Quick report
- Red Flags
- Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Mt Aire is traditionally a shallow and weak snowpack. After a quick observation 29 Dec and Drew's observation on 02 Jan I was curious to see if anything had changed prior to the approaching storm. I was not at all disappointed by the very poor snowpack structure.</p>
The goal of the day was to observe several aspects and elevations to see what the snowpack was like ahead of the approaching wet storm. While all quick pits had a poor snowpack structure, they were unreactive to compression tests. The exception to this was pit 3 where I had a CTE-3 which broke at the ground. 2 more tests did not produce any results and I feel that my first test broke due to a shrub on the ground and therefore was not a relevant test.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Thick facet layers were observed both above and below the December rain crust. While there was not a hard slab above these, 1-2" SWE with a new rain crust forming could quickly change this.</p>
Based on the cold temperatures the last 2 days, I was surprised by the lack of surface hoar.
We found a wide variety of snowpacks on the aspects we evaluated (see pit profiles).
As the wind picked up later in the day I would expect a significant amount of wind loading which could form a wind slab on top of this very weak snow pack.
It appeared as though the ground facets were starting to round. I was not able to discern if the facets above and below the December rain crust were starting to round or not.