Northern San Juan
SnowpackChris Dickson · Feb 22, 2023 · Northern San Juan
Weather
Very strong SW winds all day with tons of drifting and snow transport. Very hard to tell how much snow has actually fallen because of variable re-distribution from wind, but we observed up to 12" of new snow in lower elevation sheltered zones, and only 4-6" at higher elevations NTL. Obscured skies all day, temps in the 13-18*F range.
Snowpack
Widespread melt-freeze crusts were observed under the new snow (up to 11,500'), even on aspects with a northerly tilt. New snow was already becoming cohesive, with localized cracking around our skis, and hand shear revealing a cohesive storm slab easily shearing on the old/new snow interface. Dug a hasty pit and observed a well-defined interface within the new storm snow (density change?). Compression test resulted in a CT23SP on the 2/15 interface. New snow came in mostly right-side-up with thicker snow on the bottom but did not bond well to the melt-freeze crusts we observed in several hand shears.