Mount Elly

I don't want to get ahead of myself, but Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow and is calling for 6 more weeks of winter. I'm also starting to hear talk of a pattern change, with the high-pressure ridge off to the west breaking down early next week. This means we have this week to get a handle on the distribution of the recently buried weak layers and to keep an eye on current surfaces...or not, depending on forecast accuracy.

Toured out to Elly to investigate recent and current surfaces. Of note, in some sheltered areas, there is a well-preserved layer of surface hoar that is 2 cm tall. I did not find this everywhere, but it was easy to find on slopes with some protection from the wind and sun. Surface Hoar (SH) was found on NW, N, NE,  and E aspects as well as lots of open flat terrain that has some wind protection (Flat terrain is obviously not a problem unless we get a slab sitting on top of this layer which would make remote triggers from flat ground a concern). The biggest and most well-preserved areas of SH were in leeward open meadows but as soon as you tranistion to wind effected snow, the SH was generally knocked down underneath the recent 3-4 inches. In tighter trees, it was smaller (6-10mm) but still well preserved. In wind exposed areas, there was little to no SH but there remains a layer of faceted snow from our recent 2 week dry spell that is now buried by 3-4" of snow that fell last week. This faceted snow also exists on southerly aspects in many locations, including a pit on a SE aspect where there was 7-8 of small facets below a crust in the top foot of the snowpack. Generally, I'm not as concerned with sunny slopes as there is more rounding from warmer temps, but it will also depend on the extent/timing of any loading.

This is all pointing to a fairly widespread distribution of potential weak layers. We still have at least a week before anything significant changes, but in the meantime, send in your observations and let us know where you are finding buried surface hoar.