Northern San Juan

Snowpack

Ann Mellick · Mar 23, 2020 · Northern San Juan

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Weather

Mostly sunny skies this morning quickly became and obscured with steady snowfall by 11 am.

Snowpack

Recent snowfall continues to settle, though bits of new snowfall each day have kept the surface snow fairly low-density. The layer of greatest concern continues to be the interface between the older snow surface and the bottom of the recent snowfall. This can be found ~30 to 45 cm below the snow surface. A snowpit dug on a west aspect at 11,800' revealed 40 cm of 4-finger to fist hard snow sitting on a meter of pencil hard snow below. ECTX. Informal tests on the interface-of-concern on westerly terrain below treeline showed clean but stubborn breaks. No cracking, collapsing or other signs of instability.