Northern San Juan
SnowpackMark Allen · Dec 17, 2012 · Northern San Juan
Weather
The weather today was nearly all conditions between snowing lightly in the morning to sunny and calm at times. The wind was moderate 5-10 at TL and 15-20 in the alpine gusting to 30 coming from the NW this morning and switched to SW by the afternoon. Above tree line visibility was in and out for the morning and cleared to unlimited by afternoon. Moderate blowing snow above tree line was observed all day.
Snowpack
BTL-TL: variable distributions of 10-50cm of unconsolidated 4F decomposing fragments from the last three storms deposited on faceted grains on shaded aspects and bare ground on solar effected slopes. The snow BTL has had much more settlement that upper elevations. TL-RIDGE: local wind effect distributed the snow locally on aspects not predicted by the Putany wind gauge. As expected several Northern aspects were loaded in the alpine from the Dec 14 storm. It was also observed that recent West winds have loaded some eastern aspects and cross-loaded Southwestern and west. Most new wind redistubuted F-4F snow is on the persistent weak snow prior to the Dec 9th Storm.