Grand Mesa

Snowpack

Brandon Levy · Mar 24, 2021 · Grand Mesa

View on map

Weather

Cool with a chilly east wind to start. Winds shifted from east to south as I was headed out of the field around 1100. Broken cloud cover became scattered during the course of the morning on Grand Mesa.

Snowpack

CDOT plow ops have recorded 11" of storm snow since March 21st including 6" this morning. This snow has settled to about 24cms on the north-facing slopes above SH65. The storm snow rests on a thin melt-freeze crust on all but steeper due north aspects. The storm snow seems stuck onto the crust with small-grained rounding facets below the crust. The entire snowpack is trending toward a homogenous composition; however, there is still generally poor structure and I observed hard, sudden results on a layer of rounding depth hoar (1/19) near the ground (CT25 SC down 113cms). The snow depth is around 160-180cms on the unmitigated north-facing slopes above SH65.