Rime Crusts: Friday night's 2-3mm rime crust now buried up to a foot deep in some locations; in other areas winds had stripped the last few day's snow and was again exposed. But primarily, most snow surfaces held the 1mm rime crust from (yesterday) Monday.

A quick word on these crusts - with the ridge parked over the Pacific (and way too often overhead), it seems that so many of our "storms" and brush-by disturbances have been from the northwest, effectively sliding down the eastern edge of the ridge (imagine something similar to the parabola Brett put on the forecast for today). This is "garage meteorology", but we'll see alternating cold and warm air advection (horizontal movement of an air mass) patterns with this northwest flow (but getting to point here for riming, look for gradually warming temps along the 700mb heights, quite common during the end of the precipitation period), with the warm 'front' the purveyors of the super-cooled water droplets...frequently deposited as rime. Often annoying to ride through, they can also foment the development of facets above and below the crust (beyond the scope of this)...but not always. In any event, we'll be keeping an eye on these crusts over the next couple of weeks.