When the new snow arrives, I'm guessing it will be quite stable on the southerly facing slopes because they either have no snow whatsoever or a thin layer of wet or refrozen snow. The main problem will be the faceted snow that has completely rotted on all the shady aspects--northwest, north, northeast and east facing slopes at most all elevations. The weakest snow exists on the wind sheltered, mid elevation shady slopes. The upper elevations have quite a bit of wind damage so they may actually be safer than the ones out of the wind. We will have extremely variable avalanche conditions once we get some weight on top. The storm could come in with high freezing levels so things could get interesting. Hard to say what effect that will have on avalanche conditions. It may make the snowpack more unstable in the short term but more stable in the long term. We will need to keep a close eye on the amount of weight added and if there will be any wind transport to add additional weight from wind deposited snow.

When the storm arrives, we will have to watch carefully how the new snow is bonded to the underlying snow and various density changes as it accumulates. In many places, the faceted snow near the surface is extremely weak, so that will be the most likely sliding layer. But if the storm comes in warm, especially with rain at the beginning of the storm, it could stabilize the surface faceted layers and surface hoar. We will have to watch it carefully as it comes in. Expect very tricky conditions because of both the extreme spatial variability of the pre-existing snowpack and the uncertainties of this storm.