Quick report
It was down right tropical out there today! Plenty of sunshine and very warm temperatures made for spring-like conditions. Any frozen surface in the morning quickly softened. We only saw on new wet loose slide that ran around 11am, but admittedly we left the mountains well before the peak of the days warming. Other slides may have occurred later.
No cracking or collapsing.Weather
- Air Temp
- 48
- Cloud Cover
- clear
- Wind Loading
- none
- Recent Snowfall
- 0
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Beautiful day! Plenty of sunshine, very warm temperatures, and light winds made it feel very much like spring.
Snowpack
Clear skies allowed a relatively thick crust to form Friday night in open areas despite the warm temperatures. This quickly began to soften by 10am and was all but broken down on steeper sun exposed slopes by 11am. Below the crust about a foot of wet heavy snow sat over the 2/24 atmospheric river (AR) crust. Rollerballs were common in the softening snow. Some from the past few days were very large (2-3ft in diameter).
On steeper shaded aspects, sparkly cold dry snow still lingered. It was very well settled, strong, and bonded well to the underlying crust (down 12-15in 30-40cm). There was plenty of old wind affect, but no real wind slabs.
Under the trees the snow was wet, sticky, soft, and dirty. While we could push a bit of snow on very steep slopes, it wouldn't run far and didn't entrain.
Avalanche
- Size
- D1.5 R1
- Type
- WL
- Aspect
- E
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 4400 ft
There was markedly less avalanche activity from the past few days compared to what I expected. A few, generally small wet loose slides on S face Snoqualmie, Lundine, Red, Kendall, and Guye. One notable larger gouging wet loose slide on the SW gully of Red Mt. The only new avalanche occurred around 11am when a blob of snow initiated a wet loose slide on the E face of Guye Peak.