Vail & Summit County
AvalancheJason Konigsberg · May 21, 2022 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Winds were light with no snow transport visible. Although it was mostly cloudy today, the sun poked through from time to time making it feel very hot, kinda like a greenhouse. Storm snow amounts were 12 inches in the parking lot and 16 to 18 inches near treeline.
Snowpack
The storm came in with warmer temperatures at first and then cooled off resulting in a right-side up storm. There were no notable instabilities within the storm snow. The storm snow was generally fist hard in the morning before the sun got to it. Once the sun poked out, even for a short time, the upper-portion of storm snow became slightly moist and more cohesive. Although the storm snow was more cohesive in the afternoon, I still did not observe any signs of instability. Throughout the day there were no shooting cracks or whumpfing sounds. I performed several ECTs and got no propagating results. The new snow seemed generally well bonded to the older dust crust, at least for now. While in steeper terrain, I was able to push the new snow downhill, running on the dust crust, and entraining storm snow as it ran as small loose, wet avalanche. This was hard to do and I felt like I needed a slope near or over 40 degrees.
Avalanche
I was able to trigger a very small loose wet avalanche. It was harmless unless you got hit from behind in very steep, unforgiving terrain. A few avalanches ran during the period of intense precipitation last night. The crowns were only a few inches deep.