Public Observation

Observation Details

Signs of Unstable Snow

Observations

The snowpack at this elevation ranges from 70-100cm with about 16 cm of new snow. In our somewhat sheltered location, we didn't see much evidence of wind slab. The upper pack consists of this new storm and the underlying slab from the V-day storm, which appears to be in the process of faceting. These two storms are separated by a 1-3 cm melt-freeze crust. In the mid and lower snowpack, depth hoar and facets compose the rest of the pack and have several crusts representing the various high-pressure periods. We observed sudden fractures and propagating results on the faceted grains/depth hoar 30-50 cm down in most of our profiles. Additionally, short cut lengths with propagating results were observed on the deeper weak layers with the PST.