Quick report
~15-18cm of new snow. No sign of a storm slab problem. This snow fell with quite a bit of wind and there were isolated drifts of new snow up to ~30cm thick. I did not observe signs of instability in these fresh drifts, but they were my primary concern today. At lower and middle elevations the corn underneath the new snow was still wet, with only a thin crust on top. I didn't observe any natural wet snow activity, but if you'd gone onto a steep slope with wet corn underneath and started pushing when the sun was shining I'm sure you could have made some weird wet gouging goobers. I aimed for solar terrain today, expecting the new snow to bond better with the old snow surface here. Solar aspects are holding a stiff, icy, rough crust underneath the new snow. Plenty of sunshine in boulders in the afternoon today, which resulted in a widespread moistening of the new snow on solar aspects. Based on my earlier observations, the newly buried interface (3/12) looks like it will be most problematic at lower and middle elevations on shaded slopes. Here, a well developed stack of facets sits on top of a firm slab of settled snow. At upper elevations the snow surfaces have been pretty beat up by the wind; there is still quite a bit of faceting that has gone on at the surface, but surfaces are rough and irregular. I'd expect to see avalanche activity even in upper elevation terrain, but as far as what looks like it will be a longer lived PWL the middle and lower elevation terrain is more concerning. Solar margins (ESE-ish, W-ish) will likely hold up to some loading, but could become reactive as the slab overlying the 3/12 layer begins to bond to the crusts here and becomes stiff/dense enough to cause failure on well-developed facets underneath the crust. Direct solar slopes have looked pretty friendly in my travels. No sign of recent activity. Wind slabs I encountered were well bonded and not cracking. Snow surfaces were rapidly warming and moistening in the afternoon on slopes facing the sun.
Weather
I was out during the afternoon, there were a few brief flurries of snow with no real accumulation. 15-18cm of accumulated snow. Lots of direct sunshine in the afternoon in the boulders and observed across the highway in the smokys. Sunny slopes will have a early storm baked on interval thanks to this solar radiation. Periods of calm winds and periods of strong, gusty southerly winds.