Observations from Meiss

Strong sun but still cool in the shade. Very light wind from the north was not transporting much snow, but plenty was available for wind transport. Over a foot of new, low density snow, with more in gullies. Wind exposed slopes were scoured back to the Dec 12th rain crust.

Pic 1: Cornices were fragile and cracked and failed easily.

Pic 2: Cornice failure triggered the slope below, but slab-like qualities quickly tapered to loose-dry. New snow was deeper than this failure, and skiing remained enjoyable after losing the top few inches of new snow.

Pic 3: 2 crusts observed 50cm down in a 100cm snowpack (which means 50cm has fallen here since Dec 12th). PSTs below, in between, and above these crusts did not indicate propagation was likely (all 3 were 90/100). Similar results from CTs and an ECT. Some small angular grains observed above the upper crust.

Pic 4: Signs of previous wind transport and a small natural cornice failure sometime towards the end of the recent storm. Surprisingly minimal slab quality to this snow - it remained mostly unconsolidated. No current wind transport was observed in this area, though in the distance I saw an occasional plume of snow. New surface hoar was observed to ridgetops, along with graupel and near surface facets.