Mark was in Shingle Mill Wednesday and found a structurally challenged snowpack.

The bad news is... the snowpack has issues and weak, sugary basal snow or what we call a Persistent Weak Layer (PWL) is our current problem child. Remember... anything "persistent" in the snowpack takes time to heal and strengthen. The badder news is... until the pack becomes deeper and more robust the weak snow is here to haunt us for a while. And just as important and especially as the snowpack remains thin, the PWL is gonna roar back to life with each additional load of new snow, water, or wind. In fact, with just a little bit of dense, heavy snow stacking up yesterday, Trevor and his crew stomping around in Mill Hollow noted... "several rolling thunder-like propagating collapses could be heard underfoot, and across connected terrain. Some seemed to last the better part of a second." That tells me there's strong snow on weak snow and that's a dangerous combo in our mountains. With more storminess on the way today we're beginning to tip the scales.

New snow coupled with strong winds camouflages yesterday's wind drifts and they'll be hard to detect under today's storm snow. But here's the deal... found mostly on the leeward side of upper elevation ridges, I'd also steer clear of terrain features like chutes and gullies as well. Let's keep it simple... today, let's just avoid any fat, rounded piece of snow, especially if it sounds hollow like a drum. Or... lose some elevation, head to wind sheltered terrain and we'll lose the problem.