Front Range

Snowpack

Nick Barlow · Mar 14, 2018 · Front Range

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Weather

A balmy spring day along the Front Range. Cloud cover was variable, periods of overcast & broken skies. Enough broken for the longwave to breathe, enough overcast for minimal shortwave. Winds calm until you travel ATL, where light/gusting moderate westerlies reside.

Snowpack

Sloppy, difficult travel BTL due to slushy/sticky wet snow. NTL the snow was supportable, with a few inches of corn/slush/ice on the surface. ATL was wintry, with older wind-drifted slabs and sastrugi on the surface. Still quite a bit of structure in the snowpack at higher elevations, with multiple melt-freeze crusts, layers of rounds, facets, and depth hoar. Snow pit tests showed medium to hard sensitivity with low-grade shear quality on buried weak layers.