Quick report
Today was a warm and clear day with calm or light winds. Warming temperatures and wind since last week's storm have created a variety of surface conditions in the Virginia Lakes area. High elevation terrain near ridgetops were scoured down to firm crust. Protected N facing terrain held soft, cold snow. Wind protected east facing slopes either held a breakable crust from warm temps yesterday or soft snow that was warming (hot pow). Traversing across a wind-exposed NE facing slope we experienced a variety of conditions: Firm crust, breakable wind-board, dust on crust and dense powdery snow. Looking at Red Lake bowl we could see evidence of previous natural dry-loose avalanche activity from last week in NE facing terrain. Snow surfaces were warming by noon today and a very small sluff (D1) was rider-triggered on a steep ENE facing slope near tree line. This sluff was somewhere between dry and wet-loose. One very small (D1) sluff was rider- triggered in steep ENE facing terrain around 10,000'. It was somewhere between dry and wet-loose as surface snow was starting to warm at noon.
Weather
- Cloud Cover
- clear
- Wind Loading
- none
- Snow Avail For Transport
- small smounts
Warm temperatures and clear skies. Light and variable winds at times.