Observation: NWAC Forecaster

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Weather Summary

The weather was all over the place today. Light to moderate and at times heavy snow showers, mixed with periods of gusty winds and even some bright sunshine for a hot second or two.

Avalanche Observation Comments:

No new avalanches were observed except for some Dry Loose activity on steeper slopes.

Snowpack Observations

The new storm snow is generally well bonded to the underlying 4/8 crust. This MFcr is ~12cm thick with 2 cm of P hard snow before transitioning to 10 cm of 4F. The entire crust is moist and was typically not boot supportable. At upper elevations, it was stiffer but we were still able to punch through without much issue. Plenty of signs of the new snow being blown around by the wind and I was able to get some blocks to fail on small test features, but I couldn't get any actual Wind Slabs to fail during my time out. Perhaps in different terrain that is more conducive to Wind Slab development, it would have been a different story. We found larger drifts and areas scoured down to the 4/8 crust during our travels. In areas out of the wind's influence, the snow generally lacked slab characteristics as it was made up of a lot of graupel and low-density PP. This allowed for some Dry Loose activity on steeper slopes, but it wasn't too widespread or fast-moving since the 4/8 crust is not an ideal bed surface at this time.