6:00 a.m. weather data:

24 Hour Snow 0" 72 Hour Snow 9" Base Depth at Gold Basin 56" Wind NW 5-15 Temp -6F

Temperatures are in negative territory this morning and though it's going to be a beautiful day you may not want to rush out the door until it warms up a bit! Today we'll see sunny skies, light NW winds and temps at 10,000' barely climbing out of the upper teens. A weak shortwave will bring cloudy skies to the area on Sunday night. Dry and slowly but steadily warming conditions are on tap through mid-week. A weak low pressure system moves on shore in the Pacific Northwest on Thursday bringing a slight chance for snow showers on Friday but don't hold your breath for this one.

NWS Weather Forecast for the La Sal Mountains

Gold Basin SNOTEL site (10,000')

The snow is beginning to settle after this week's storm cycle brought up to 30" of new snow to the mountains but it's still deep out there. In our travels on snow machines yesterday we found excellent powder and over the hood conditions. We also continued to observe signs of instability such as cracking in the snow surface and slab failures on steep road banks. Observers also reported collapsing and cracking. Check out these reports from Tim Mathews and Travis Nauman. Throughout much of the storm cycle SW winds blew and drifted snow onto leeward, northerly aspects. Drifts have formed over a variety of old snow surfaces including hard and crusted, to loose, weak and faceted. The weakest underlying snow can be found on sheltered, northerly facing slopes right around treeline and below. Above treeline the distribution of this weak layer is much more variable. As the recent snow continues to settle, and the danger becomes less obvious, the presence of buried weak, faceted snow will continue to be problematic.