Steamboat & Flat Tops
AvalancheAnonymous ยท Feb 21, 2015
Weather
Yesterday saw times of intense snowfall and light to moderate westerly winds. About 8" accumulation. This snow was warm and wet, with periods of graupel. This morning there was an additional 8" around 10,000'. The new snow had much less H2O and almost no wind on it.
Snowpack
Most of our obs today are from S aspects around 10,500'. Yesterdays snow seems to be playing nicely with the old snow surface, sun crusts, but the interface between yesterdays and last nights snow is a bit more active. There's a distinct density change at this interface as well as a small layer of 1-2mm graupel. Below the new storm slab and earlier WS is a pretty hearty sun crust, with a bit (1 cm) of facets above and below. CT results were in the easy range for the top half of the storm snow (CT4) at 20cm but with Q3 quality. At the storm snow/old surface interface (sun crust) CT's were in the Mod range, but again Q3.
Avalanche
Ski cuts on S and SE slope produced small loose slides at this "mid-storm" interfacce,, again, down 6-8". We had expected to see a bit more slab formation and activity than we did. We'll see what kind of new load we get tonight.