24 Hour Snow: 0" 72 Hour Snow: 0" Season Total Snow: 63" Depth at Gold Basin: 29"

After a pretty good run, northerly winds began decreasing yesterday afternoon and are currently mostly light. Today will be dry and mild with high temperatures in the upper 30's. A warm and moist atmospheric river (AR) is poised to impact northern Utah and Colorado this weekend. As has been typical of the pattern this season, we're going to miss out on the action but we will see some clouds and more importantly, very warm temperatures by Sunday. Down the pipe, a stronger AR could push further south later next week. It's a long way out but one can only hope.

Northerly winds have been whipping around loose surface snow near treeline and our local snowcat driver extraordinaire, Gavin Harrison, reported some isolated sensitive drifts on easterly aspects yesterday. Ryan Huels reported similar activity the day before. Check out his observation here. I don't think fresh drifts will be too problematic, but pay attention to areas that show signs of recent wind loading. Look for smooth, rounded pillows on the leeward sides of terrain features. Cracking is a sign of instability. Above treeline the surface is very hard and wind blasted or scoured down to the rocks.

The overall snowpack is weak in many places, especially on shady slopes below treeline where small, loose dry avalanches are possible on very steep slopes. This weak snow is forming a tenuous base, and it won't take much new snow for us to start seeing avalanches.

This photo by Ryan Huels illustrates why any problems you might find are near treeline rather than above where slopes are scoured or wind hardened.