Wetting surface snow on Rubicon Peak

We toured Rubicon Peak this morning to monitor the development of surface wet snow on NW-N-NE-E aspects. Air temperatures held below freezing until about 10:30 am at which point air temperatures climbed above freezing fairly rapidly. By 11 am the snow surface on sunny E aspect terrain at 9,000' was starting to become sun affected. Moving onto more NNE aspect terrain at this time we encountered colder snow all the way down to about 7,300'. As midday approached, snow began to melt and drip off of trees on otherwise shaded N-NE aspects. The recent storm snow on NW-N-NE aspects also began to succumb to the effects of warming around this time. There was a notable increase in storm snow density starting around midday above 8,000'. Below about 7,500' the snow surface began to become wet. There will likely be widespread areas of new melt-freeze crust on the snow surface tomorrow morning.

We did not see any blowing snow today. I found one small area of thin wind slab below the summit rock outcrop on an E aspect at treeline. Propagation was minimal and limited to previously undercut areas.