Wind Loading

No significant avalanche concerns today but my main concern is the expected storm for Wednesday. It looks to be warm and windy. With quite a bit of dry, soft powder on the wind sheltered, north facing slopes above about 9,000', it seems like a good potential for storm slabs on the underlying colder, drier, lower density snow. Also, it was still easy to kick off shallow stuffs and slabs on the very steep slopes today so tomorrow's storm slabs could break 6 inches into the old snow. There's not much of a slick bed surface, so the storm slab or wind slab may be stubborn. The strong wind seemed to be densifying and/or destroying the surface snow in above treeline, wind exposed terrain so the new snow may bond better to the wind damaged snow than in the wind sheltered areas. Today's snow surface on sun exposed slopes had a thin to thick zipper crust and it seems like the new snow should bond better in those areas. Bottom line: I would caution people getting out on Wednesday about possible storm slabs or wind slabs sliding on lower density snow on wind sheltered slopes above 9,000' that face the north quadrant of the compass. Just as important, watch for fresh wind slabs within the new snow from the strong winds on all aspects.