Observation: NWAC Forecaster

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Weather Summary

Wintry day with very heavy snowfall from Tumwater Canyon to Berne on the morning commute. Snowfall lightened up once closer to Stevens Pass. East winds appeared to be picking up, and blowing a bit through the pass upon arrival. We experienced some faint sunbreaks, though mostly overcast skies with a few shortlived periods of heavier snowfall during the day. Wind was actively transporting snow from the E on the Moonlight ridgeline, at times this seemed to veer more NE'ly, other times more SE'ly.

Snowpack Observations

We generally found about 10-15cm of new snow over a thin crust from yesterday, but the crust only existed on S aspects.

We dug a profile at 5,200ft on a SW aspect. HS was 340cm, boot pen was 50cm, and ski pen 30cm.
Tilt tests showed a planar shear on large stellars down 20cm beneath yesterday's thin sun crust.
The 4/8 crust was down 53cm here, and we couldn't get clean failures with tilt tests or compression tests on this moist interface.
The early April crust was down 88cm, with very large, weak melt forms (4F) beneath a P hard crust.

On the Moonlight ridgeline, we were able to get some minor cracking in fresh wind drifts. Some of the cross loaded pillows on steeper entrances in the area were impressive, and it appeared that a skier had triggered a small wind slab earlier in the day on one of them. We also noticed quite a few thick, firm drifts from yesterday's E winds, but these all appeared stubborn or unreactive.

Snow surfaces warmed up and became heavier on E-S-W aspects at mid and especially lower elevations by the end of the day.