Observation: Public

Observation Details

Signs of Unstable Snow

Observations

Beautiful day with a decent freeze in the morning and high, thin clouds. Calm to light winds at ridgetop with skies clearing in the afternoon.

We found weakening snow surfaces in the shade with some near-surface facets and surface hoar above around 4,000ft. East and West aspects held breakable crust. Southeast to Southwest have well developed melt forms (corn) in the upper foot or so of snow, with dry snow beneath that. Generally decent travel conditions if you let the sun warm the surface a little bit.

We targeted a few areas to check out the Mid-January PWL with our still mostly dry and winter-like snowpack.
At 5,200ft on a NE aspect HS was 224cm. The rain crust from 2/23 was down 42cm as a 4cm thick K- crust.
The Mid-Jan crust was down 112cm as 4F+ faceted melt forms. These were large-grained (2mm), and the layer itself almost felt like depth hoar...junky!
Here we got the following unfortunate results:
CT 21 Sudden Collapse down 112cm
CT12 Sudden Collapse down 112cm
PST 30/112 (End) down 112cm

At 5,900ft on an ESE aspect we found an HS of 168cm
The slab from February/late Jan was well bonded and dense, getting progressively harder to P, until the very thin layer of small grained facets above the crust from Mid-Jan.
We got the following, also unfortunate results:
CT 29 Sudden Collapse down 90cm in the Mid-Jan crust/facet sandwich.
CT 24 Sudden Planer down 85cm on .5-1mm rounding facets above the crust.
PST 40/100 (End) down 85cm above the crust.