Periods of significant winds the past 24 hours have built drifts onto a variety of aspects, most failing on the low-density snow as a weak layer. While the newest wind drifts will be easy to identify – rounded, smooth pillows of snow - yesterday’s wind slabs are now hidden under the new snow. Cracking of denser snow is sometimes an indication that you have hit a wind slab.

Cornices have continued to grow along the mid and upper elevation ridge lines. They often break back further than expected, so give them a wide berth and avoid travel below them.

On some slopes, the faceted layers in our snowpack may have reached a breaking point. These deeper slides could be 2 to 3 feet deep, and are most likely to break on a mid-pack faceted weak layer, which are most widespread on northwest through easterly facing slopes at the mid and upper elevations in the Ogden area mountains. Any smaller triggered slide – such as a wind slabs or sluff – has the potential to step down to one of these deeper weak layers.

In the shallow snowpack areas, slides may break on the faceted snow nearer to the ground – for example, slopes that have slid one or more times this year and rocky terrain with a shallower snowpack Cracking and collapsing are bulls-eye clues to instability, but these clues may not be present, and snow pit tests are proving to be unreliable.

Storm snow soft slabs and loose snow sluffs can be triggered today on many steep slopes.