With a period of high pressure in the forecast, we can likely expect the snow surface to weaken with near-surface faceting as well as surface hoar. I have been intrigued with near-surface faceting and over the past few years I have followed Brett Kobernik's lead and have set up some instrumentation to monitor the temperature at the snow surface as well as 2 cm below the snow surface. (The temperature differences between day and night in the top few cms of snow is largely responsible for near-surface facets.) One thing I have done differently this time is, rather than place the instruments at mid and upper elevations (where we in fact care most about weak layers), I have placed them in my own backyard. Currently there is 30 cms (1 foot) of settled snow, and it has been capped with nearly 10 cms (3-4") of very light density snow that has seemingly deposited more snow from 12/30-12/31 at lower rather than higher elevations. By placing the temperature sensors in my backyard, I will be able to regularly observe the stellar and dendrite crystals transform and therefore hopefully be able to satisfy my curiosity of the detailed process as crystals transform from 6-sided stellar plates and dendrites to angular, faceted crystals. It is my intention to regularly photograph the crystals over this coming week to create a timeline of the metamorphism. I am including a few photographs of beautiful, freshly-fallen crystals from 12/31. [Photos are taken using a 25X macroscope and an iPhone as a camera.] The first photo is of a stellar about 1 mm in size.

I like this photo because it shows a stellar dendrite on the right (it is about 3 mm in size and we can usually see these with the naked eye), as well as a stellar plate on the left. Also, if you look carefully, you can see a tiny plate at the bottom of the photo.

Forecaster note: very cool Greg! I love this stuff! It looks like we're in for a faceting event of some sort. I'll be putting out sensors as well. Good stuff! Kobernik