Vail & Summit County
SnowpackJason Konigsberg · Apr 30, 2016 · Vail & Summit County
Weather
Snowed all morning. Mostly S-1 with some brief periods of S2. Northerly wind was light with light snow transport. Approximately 6" of low density snow in last 24 hours.
Snowpack
New snow stayed dry at all elevations with cool temperatures and no breaks of sun today. Estimate of new snow in last 24 hours is 6 inches. The only instability noted in the storm snow of the last 3 days was in the recent top 2 to 4 inches. Very easy to trigger multiple storm slabs within these top few inches. The Storm Slab avalanches would fracture in small pockets and entrain new snow acting more as Loose Dry avalanches as they ran 100 to 200 feet vertical. In general these avalanches were harmless and the resulting sloughs did not have enough power or volume to knock a person off of their feet.