Grand Mesa
SnowpackColin Mitchell · Apr 5, 2017 · Grand Mesa
Weather
Bluebird Colorado day. Mostly sunny skies and light westerly winds.
Snowpack
Island Lake: Island Lake is starting to melt out. HS < 24" including this week's 10" with plenty of rocks showing. Overall, a well consolidated spring snowpack. Avalanches in the old snow are very unlikely here, any future instabilities will be surface-based either from new snow or heating. Skyway Point: Skyway still has a wintry snowpack. HS 72" with 10" Hst from this week. It got warm and sunny enough yesterday to create a melt-freeze crust and some rollerballs on steep road cuts. About 3" of snow fell overnight on this crust. The new snow was cold stellars. Air temp was still just below freezing at 13:00, and the snow showed little sign of warming up today. The top 40 cm of the snowpack is a mixture of rounds and M/F crusts, sitting on an older, stouter crust that is supportable to boots. Below this crust, the snowpack is well-consolidated rounds. Avalanches are unlikely in the old snow, and will be surface-based instabilities caused by new snow or heating. Enough cold snow is on or near the surface to keep the possibility of LW avalanches that reach the road in the picture for the next couple of days.