Observation: Snake Creek

Observation Date

4/4/2014

Observer Name

Joey Dempster

Region

Salt Lake » Snake Creek

Location Name or Route

Eight Ball - Snake Creek

Weather

Sky

Scattered

Weather Comments

Warm-ish, but still not full on hot. I think there will still be non-crusted powder tomorrow on shady slopes.

Snow Characteristics

Snow Surface Conditions

Powder

Dense Loose

Damp

Snow Characteristics Comments

Fantastic skiing again today. Settled powder on shady N facing slopes skied like the storm was yesterday, but with better stability. Today I skied multiple laps on 35+ slopes with no signs of instability. The snowmobiles were getting after it today (and yesterday) as well, putting up lines on every steep slope in sight without ferreting out any instabilities. Digging down reveals why: the new snow gets consistently denser as you go down in the snowpack, and adhesion between layers is so strong that columns completely disintegrate well before shearing. In the areas that I have observed yesterday and today, It's about as perfect a setup as you can get. As for tomorrow, I have selected "moderate" as the forecast, but that is assuming we get snow and wind. In general, without wind, the new snow should find a benign reception with good adhesion to the warm existing snow surface.

Red Flags

Rapid Warming

Red Flags Comments

I did become a little nervous in the afternoon that everything was just "too perfect", and reminded myself that we haven't really had a big warm up yet. It was warm this afternoon, but I'm not sure it quite met the threshold for "rapid warming". I suppose we may be off the hook for tomorrow as well if the storm verifies, but if not (or when temps finally do spike) wet sluffs will be a certainty, and rapid warming slabs could be possible.

Today's Observed Danger Rating

Low

Tomorrows Estimated Danger Rating

Moderate

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