Vail & Summit County

Snowpack

A lot of cracking in the new snow in and out of the wind. The stiffer slab of wind-drifted snow near ridgetop produced longer shooting cracks and a small avalanche on a test slope. One snowpit below treeline (out of wind-affected terrain) showed several easy results in compression tests but no propagation. The faceted layer that is now mid pack also did not show any propagation yesterday in tests in a nearby location. We felt some collapsing but it was hard to tell what layer was collapsing and if it was just storm snow.... Bottom line- the upside-down storm snow was reactive and human-triggered avalanches on any wind-loaded slope was likely today. We are still not seeing any obvious signs that the facet layer that formed around New Years is reactive but it would be surprising not to see avalanches step down to this layer in wind-loaded areas.