Variability on Castle Peak

Location Name: 
Castle Peak
Region: 
Donner Summit Area
Date and time of observation: 
Thu, 12/03/2015 - 11:45
Location Map: 
United States
39° 22' 1.74" N, 120° 21' 13.284" W
See map: Google Maps
US


Red Flags: 
Observation made by: Forecaster
Snowpit Observations
More detailed information about the snowpack: 

A thin melt freeze crust existed on all aspects that had snow cover on Castle Peak today. Repeated hand pits and probing with ski poles showed layers of weaker faceted snow in the bottom half of the snowpack. Observations on these layers also indicated that they are gaining strength. In most places snow from these layers would clump together and was easy to make a snowball out of. One location showed repeatable unstable snowpit test results. Compared to tests done in a similar spot last week, these tests indicated a slight strengthening trend. In the other 5 locations where we performed ECT tests between 8000 and 8800 ft on N-NW aspects, the tests indicated that even if the weak layers break the resulting fracture would not travel very far. In fact a pit about 15 ft away from the snowpit that yeilded the unstable results did not reveal any signs of snowpack instability (see attached snowpits). 

Snowpit or crown profile photo or graph: 
Weather Observations
Blowing Snow: 
No
Cloud Cover: 
75% of the sky covered by clouds
Air temperature: 
Above Freezing
Wind Speed: 
Strong
Precipitation: 
Snow
Air temperature trend: 
Cooling
Wind Direction: 
Southwest
Accumulation rate: 
Less than 1 in. per hour
More detailed information about the weather: 

Very light snow started around 1 pm.