Winds on Pre-Laurel Peak: SW 10-15 Temp 21° Percent of Normal: 101%

Winds have finally backed off as zonal flow and an unsettled weather pattern take over. Today, look for mostly cloudy skies, light to moderate WSW winds, and high temps near 30 degrees at 10,000'. Our next chance for snow comes on Thursday when a cutoff low currently over the Pacific moves into the region. The system has good jet support and plenty of moisture, but the current track looks to be south of our area.

In our travels yesterday, Dave and I concluded that overall conditions are one star but that's still a huge improvement. 8" of new snow Saturday night was wildly blown and unevenly distributed and most open terrain has some degree of wind affect. Sheltered locations offer much better conditions. We continued to observe active blowing and drifting of the most recent snow, and we found wind slabs formed over the past couple of days to be widely distributed across the landscape. They varied in depth from 6"-24" with the deepest drifts found on north and easterly aspects. On southerly aspects, drifts are shallow and more isolated, often existing next to scoured surfaces. We did not observe much cracking, but we experienced several collapses indicating that slabs of wind drifted snow remain sensitive to the weight of a skier or rider.

On steep, northerly aspects, deep drifts have added stress to a persistent weak layer (PWL) of faceted snow near the base of the snowpack. This has increased the likelihood for triggering a deeper and more dangerous avalanche. We are uncertain to what degree this load has affected the PWL, and we've been wrestling with how to quantify the likelihood of triggering a deep avalanche for some time now. For more details on that see my recent blog post. The bottom line is that Dave and I are continuing to avoid big, steep, northerly facing slopes.