Minor blowing snow, small wind slabs, and minor wet snow on Silver Peak.

We toured Silver Peak this morning to look at lingering wind slabs and surface wet snow development. Conditions started off mostly clear with cloud cover increasing to about 1/3rd sky cover during the morning hours. This was more cloud cover than forecast for today. Despite the cloud cover, we observed areas of wet surface snow on SE aspects, especially in areas cross loaded rather than scoured by the ongoing NE winds. Small roller balls and pinwheels were the extent that we observed prior to midday in the 7,500' to 8,000' elevation range, but it seemed that surface wet snow development would progress into the afternoon hours. On our exit out the Pole Creek Rd, wet snow was substantial below 7,000' in sun exposed areas and made for slow gliding.

Looking at lingering wind slabs as well, we saw them on the cross loaded NW and SE aspects that we traveled. We did not have workable S-SW-W aspects as a part of our terrain today. We triggered some minor cracking in slabs up to 6 inches deep on isolated test slopes. The wind slabs that we found were small and only present in pockets of terrain. None of them extended very far down slope.