Front Range
AvalancheJason Konigsberg · Mar 2, 2021 · Front Range
Weather
Clear skies and warm temperatures with a few breezes at ridgetop.
Snowpack
Below treeline the snowpack is supportable to skis but otherwise it is pretty thin (about 80 cm) and mostly faceted. As you move into the near treeline elevation band, the snowpack gets deeper although it is varies greatly. I found the snow height to be between 120 cm and 180 cm on northeast and east near treeline slopes. The structure doesn't look much different than many other places in the state except that the depth hoar is a bit softer at fist-plus hardness or four-finger-minus. It is hard to effect the weak layer in Extended Column Tests and I got no results where the snowpack was 150 cm deep. I removed part of the slab and then I was able to get propagation on top of the depth hoar. The surface snow is faceted on most aspects except where the heat penetrated the snowpack more than a few inches. This is generally on south and southwest slopes. I would expect much thinner crust-facet combos on the relatively cooler southeast and east-facing slopes when the snow re-freezes. Needless to say, with this clear weather regime, surfaces are generally weak and any new slab will have trouble bonding to the snow below. There are also a couple other buried facet layers in the upper 18 inches of the snowpack. No slab right now, so no propagating results but something to watch.--- I found the weakest snowpack on a south-facing near treeline slope. There isn't much of a slab so the snowpack is quite stable here but worth monitoring. Melt-water penetrated about 4 inches (10 cm) into the snowpack. No rollerballs or signs of wet instability observed.
Avalanche
No recent large avalanches observed today or in quite a few days throughout the Northern and Central Mountains