Front Range

Snowpack

Mike Cooperstein, Jeff Deems · Jan 13, 2018 · Front Range

Weather

The weather varied today depending where we were in the terrain and the amount of cloud cover. The first thing we noticed when we arrived were the strong north to northwest winds on the surrounding peaks. The wind made it quite cold even in the parking lot. The sun came out and we were out of the wind for the first hour or so of the tour. Temperatures felt warm in the sun in protected areas and we saw evidence of a warming snow surface on southerly aspects. As we got higher in the terrain the wind really kicked in. Snow was still being transported at higher elevations. We experienced a few periods of S-1 snow. Total accumulations were less than an inch throughout the day.

Snowpack

Still not much snow in lower elevation areas. There are still a lot of exposed obstacles. Closer to the near treeline elevation boundary the snow gets deeper. Snow depths were about a meter deep and deeper near treeline. There are two distinct persistent weak layers in the snowpack. One is a layer of near-surface faceted crystals buried about 60 cm deep. This is the surface of the old snow before the last storm. The other is a layer of depth hoar about 20 cm thick at the ground. Snowpack tests showed failures on both of these layers, but the fracture propogated easier at the top of the deeper depth hoar layer.