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Observation Date
2/4/2019
Observer Name
L. Dunn
Region
Salt Lake » Big Cottonwood Canyon » Days Fork » Chicken Sh#! Ridge
Location Name or Route
Days Fork/CSR
Weather
Sky
Obscured
Precipitation
Heavy Snowfall
Wind Direction
Southwest
Wind Speed
Strong
Weather Comments
Snowing moderately at the Spruces CG, with snowfall intensity increasing significantly as we progressed south into Days Fork. Heavy snowfall of mostly graupel for hours and hours. Our skin track and ski tracks were completely erased between runs by the combination of heavy snowfall and wind. It was a full on blizzard on CSR, but partly cloudy and mild in lower BCC. Looking at the weather radar, it appears to have been a nearly stationary orographicly forced storm over a small portion of the central Wasatch much of Monday.
Snow Characteristics
New Snow Depth
15"
New Snow Density
High
Snow Surface Conditions
Powder
Snow Characteristics Comments
Mostly graupel from Sunday and mostly graupel all day Monday. Great riding conditions, deeper today than Sunday. We saw no cracking or any other signs of instability other than the graupel rolling down the slope. Hasty pits on the southeast aspects of CSR reveal about 15-20 inches of new snow on top of a suncrust with some weaker layers below the crust. Most of the snow above the suncrust is graupel from the past 2 days and had no layering. We skied some steeper rollovers and saw no activity, everything stayed put where we were skiing.
Today's Observed Danger Rating
Considerable
Tomorrows Estimated Danger Rating
Considerable