Afternoon weather obs: clearing skies in the afternoon in the WRV. A few pockets of sun here and there in the Galena Summit area, but mostly overcast skies with periods of S-1 to S1 precip. Moderate gusty winds blowing out of the W along the ridge, strong, humid wind blowing out of the N at summit. Lots of snow being shuffled around in both middle and upper elevation terrain.
No recent avalanches observed, though visibility was very limited.
My primary objective was to see what the storm was doing in this area and to see how much the wind was moving snow and to gather a bit more data on upper snowpack on solars. I found lots of drifts near ridgeline in exposed middle and upper elevation terrain. These were 30-40cm thick along the ridgeline but quickly tapered downslope. I experienced a good bit of cracking in these fresh drifts that appeared to be failing on a layer of delicate PP from early in the storm. I also experienced a few small, muffled collapses that appeared to involve facets between crusts that were generated in the past few weeks. On solars there are 3 crusts in the upper 20cm of the snowpack. I did not perform any snowpit obs on these, just hand pits and pole probes as I moved through terrain. These crusts were all 1-2cm thick and moderately aerated, with signs of faceting at the crusts and immediately adjacent to them. The upper two crusts had a 2-3cm thick interval of largely faceted snow between the crusts, which produced a few small, muffled collapses. This was the most worrisome conformation, but without a significant slab on top this isn't a widespread problem. I'd expect it to develop into one as we continue building the slab on top or in favored areas where the wind has built a slab on top.
Problem | Location | Distribution | Sensitivity | Size | Comments |
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Comments: Rose shaded for the crust+facet problem that is developing in the upper snowpack. There are persistent slab problems on large portions of the compass, this is just what I was able to directly observe. |
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Layer Depth/Date: 20-30cm Comments: If you'd gone looking for a wind slab problem you could've found it today, though most slabs were likely small/very small and restricted to near ridgeline. |