Headed out to look at snow surfaces before the new snow system moved in. The surface was primarily still made up of soft, loose powder - by the end of the day, some south-facing aspects had begun to get a bit moist. When we stuck our shovel blades in we still found a weak snowpack structure with facets on the ground. These facets were beginning to round and stubborn, not giving us any results in the ECT, but still there and still a point of concern when we add more wind, snow and bring the potential of reawakening this layer. Additional loading will be a great telltale on the true dormancy of this layer.

What I was more concerned about was a thin (1cm) melt-freeze crust below the most recent 20cm of snow. On our tour, we saw no fast running sluffs, but there have been plenty of them in the observations. Before the storm, there was a variety of surfaces varying from wind, sun and temperature crusts that were capped with low-density stellar. Once we add a lot of snow and increased winds all of those previous firm surfaces will be a perfect bed surface for new snow avalanches and storm slabs to run on.

Photo of high dark clouds building by the end of the day.