Front Range
SnowpackBrian Lazar · Feb 4, 2016 · Front Range
Weather
Cold, very windy, and lots of blowing snow. Big wave cloud sat east of the Continental Divide, with broken skies as you looked west.
Snowpack
The wind really did some damage to the recent storm snow. Lots of drifting snow. From the looks of it, the drifting had been going on for ~24 hours. Even btl, in any area not very sheltered there was anywhere from a thin wind skin ~5cm to a supportable wind crust 20cm thick. Soft storm snow beneath the surface wind crust was about 30 cm of recent storm snow. The midpack has stiff mid pack slabs with facets in between. The most worrisome layer that produced results in test was about 2-2.5 feet deep (see profile). Triggering an avalanche on this layer seemed likely today, and can't imagine it will be much better tomorrow with all the ongoing drifting snow.