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Observation: White Pine

Observation Date
2/17/2013
Observer Name
Bruce Tremper
Region
Salt Lake
Location Name or Route
White Pine to Spire on day off
Weather
Sky
Overcast
Precipitation
Light Snowfall
Wind Direction
Northwest
Wind Speed
Moderate
Weather Comments
We got Drew's forecasted couple of traces. Snow fell for about an hour, which added up to a mighty 2 tenths of an inch. Winds picked up and blew fairly hard during and aftert the cold front from the northwest and moved some snow around
Snow Characteristics
New Snow Density
Low
Snow Surface Conditions
Powder
Dense Loose
Faceted Loose
Wind Crust
Melt-Freeze Crust
Snow Characteristics Comments

Nearly all of the above for snow surface conditions. Still some dense, soft, dry snow on sun and wind sheltered terrain. The wind was moving quite a bit of snow around above 10,000' with some shallow wind slabs formed. Crusty on sun exposed slopes.

Red Flags
Red Flags
Wind Loading
Cracking
Avalanche Problem #1
Problem
Persistent Weak Layer
Trend
Same
Problem #1 Comments

Main problem was wind slabs, mostly at elevations above about 10,000'. The past wind and wind today has created some fairly widespread areas of wind damaged snow with shallow wind slabs that would crack out but we could not get any of them to move. We did not get too far into the more heavily drifted terrain but people need to watch out for wind drifts tomorrow.

Comments

You can see quite a bit of wind erosion and deposition in the Tri Chutes area when the sun came out in the afternoon after the passage of the cold front.

Wind loaded texture on the north aspect of Lake Peak in White Pine. The wind loading was fairly extensive but fairly shallow.