The last flakes are falling in the early morning hours. It is 17 degrees in Gold Basin, we have reached our high for today and temperatures will slowly decrease, with a low of 4 degrees overnight. Pre-Laurel is offline, but other wind stations are showing overnight winds out of the SSW averaging in the 20s and gusting to the low 30s MPH. Winds will decrease, and shift to the North, blowing 10-15 MPH today as the storm exits our region. Lingering snow showers will give way to gradually clearing skies and sunshine later today. High pressure takes over, but mountain temperatures will remain cold this week. Thanksgiving should be a beautifully crisp, clear day in the mountains.

What a storm! This is exactly what we needed, and the real story is the water. The snow fell in two waves. The first wave was warm and wet, with heavy PI rates, dropping 12 inches of snow at 3.0 inches Snow Water Equivalent (SWE). No, that's not a typo. The second wave came overnight with colder temperatures and gave us another 6 inches of snow at 0.7 SWE for a storm total of 18 inches of snow and 3.7 inches SWE. Those are some serious water numbers! This heavy, wet snow will greatly improve mountain travel. Chris Benson reported surfing on top of everything yesterday, check out his full observation here. Early season low tide conditions still exist, and you need to be on the lookout for the usual rocks and logs, but this storm will certainly help.

The warm and wet storm has laid a cohesive slab across the mountain range. The slab rests on the many weak snow surfaces that formed during November. This is a classic strong-over-weak scenario, and it is creating very dangerous avalanche conditions. Avalanches can also fail within the storm snow, and at the new snow/old snow interface. SW winds blew throughout the duration of the storm, creating sensitive and dangerous drifts on Northerly aspects. Keep your terrain choices conservative today.

We have received a lot of great early-season observations, check them out here.