Observation: NWAC Forecaster

Advanced Information

Weather Summary

Skies were mainly obscured and light snow was falling in the morning, but by 1200hrs precip had stopped and shadows were visible despite the obscured skies. Snowline was about 4000ft in the morning.

Snowpack Observations

There was 4" of moist overnight snow at 4200ft, where we started skinning. Surface snow remained moist, until about 5000ft, where it finally was dry. 4700-5200ft we stayed out of a low 30 degree meadow and climbed a treed subridge, where old and new wind drifts were present. This was the only wind we encountered during the day. One small drift cracked, but that was it.

Our highest point had a long ridge with old signs of wind drifting but no recent drifts. We dug a pit at the end of that ridge on a more sheltered north-facing aspect. We found low-density snow down to the valentine's crust, 2 1/2ish feet down. It was hard to discern new and old layers, until doing pit tests, specifically an ECT where we got a propagation at 13 taps on yesterday's storm interface, about 10 inches down. It was difficult, but we finally found a few 3mm surface hoar grains amidst the 4f hardness layers. The pit was ~300cm, a stark contrast to a south-facing 200cm pit at the same elevation. There was an obvious 2/26 crust, and the Valentine's crust was just over a foot deep. A compression test failed beneath the 2/26 crust, but it did not propagate in an ECT.

Snow surfaces on south aspects became moist to our high point at noon as the cloud cover thinned. Tiny rollerballs came down the edge of the meadow we skied, but that was it.