Observation: NWAC Forecaster

Advanced Information

Weather Summary

A few light snow flurries with patchy sunshine. Warm in the sun, cold in the shade. Clouds came and went. No blowing snow observed with calm to light winds.

Snowpack Observations

Found nice powder conditions with minimal fresh wind slab or wind effect in the recent snow, although I was finding recently covered windslab and drifts to 4F+ in hardness. These slabs were not reactive for the most part, except for a couple places where track tests would show some limited and isolated fractures.
Boot pen was often knee deep, sled pen about 15cm, ski pen 30cm.
Somewhat of a theme recently, near ridgeline NE and E aspects were very thin and held weak faceted snow (F-4F) to the ground, likely due to recent cold temps and frequent E winds of late.

I could see a fair amount of terrain and a fair amount of tracks, but no avalanche activity was noted besides some recent rollerballs on steep SW aspects below Lion Rock.

A profile on an ESE aspect at 5,700ft showed an HS of 128cm.
CT M RP x2 down 18cm within a pair of very thin suncrusts.
CTM SP x1 down 38cm beneath a 1cm MFcr on 4F FC (Likely the Valentines Day crust/facet/crust sandwich).
CTH SC x1 down 73cm on Jan 4 SH, which was large and still made glass like sounds when disturbed. This layer sits beneath a number of crusts, however.
ECTN M down 18cm and 38cm.