Skies are clear; mountain temps are in the mid to upper 20s, and winds generally light from the north. Above 8000', riding and travel conditions are fast on Thursday's couple inches of new capped with a thin rime crust. Wind eroded terrain down to the early week rain crust are slippery at best. Upper elevations have 2-3' of total snow. High relative humidity, light wind, and clear skies are perfect weather conditions for another bumper crop of surface hoar developing on the snow surfaces. It's the wintertime equivalent of dew; we call it "loud powder" and is fun to ski and ride through, but is problematic for the avalanche conditions once buried. (Bo Torrey pic below). The southerly aspects went off (became damp) yesterday, but again the riding conditions remain quite good in the sun and wind sheltered terrain above 8000'.

On another note, it sure seems like the future is now. High rain/snow lines from last Monday/Tuesday (up to 9000' give or take) and just looking around at the general coverage brings us to Leigh Sturges and John Horel's work in 2010, Assessing the sensitivity of Wasatch snowfall to temperature variations. (This was her master's work "while she was a pro observer for the UAC".) The image below from Steenburgh's Secrets of the Greatest Snow on Earth shows the work in a nutshell. Evelyn, too, well described the elevation-dependent snow years ago in an annual report - "It's as if a child had frosted a cake and had forgotten about the sides." Pic looking south along the Ogden skyline on Friday.