Observation: Public

Observation Details

Signs of Unstable Snow

Observations

An amalgamation of several outings through the day near Central:

Cold morning touring as the ski area came to life. Wind had moved the night's snowfall around, scouring wind-exposed areas, seemingly mostly from easterlies.

Mid-day skiing saw a period of freezing rain, clouding goggles and shutting down the ski area's detachable-grip lifts

Afternoon tour included the surprise that precipitation had returned to snow above the freezing-rain zipper crust. Precip during the tour had a substantial component of larger-grained graupel-like refrozen particles. The crust skied better than our low expectations had anticipated. A little hooky, but still quite skiable.

Precipitation at pass-level has stayed frozen all day, if freezing rain counts as frozen. Temperatures have stayed quite cold (but clearly much warmer at the top of Alpental from telemetry).