Snowpack

Observation: Salt Lake

Peter EarleSalt Lake
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Quick report

Red Flags
Wind Loading, Poor Snowpack Structure
Red Flags Comment
<p>Not a ton of snow available for transport, but the wind was trying to blow some around and was forming moderately dense slabs in leeward zones. Snowpack structure discussed below.</p>

Snowpack

Instability Comment
<p>Did not encounter any active wind slabs today, but imagine there might be a few new pockets in the highest terrain and some old lingering pockets might be stubbornly released in the same areas</p> <p>Found stronger snow today than expected, the now buried NSF layer was much less reactive in the upper cottonwoods than on the PC ridgeline a few days ago, but there was a nice groupel sandwich between two crusts in addition to the buried NSF. Hopefully these small storm will help layer thinning and sinter some of these layers together, but a big storm could certainly get things going, and there's some large groupel grains that will hang around for a while.</p>

Southern exposures had a challenging breakable (but occasionally supportable) crust, northern aspects were skiing well out of the wind, but wind affected slopes had some wind buff to bust through.