Stable Wind Slabs and Soft Melt Freeze Snow on Red Lake

Location Name: 
Red Lake Peak
Region: 
Carson Pass Area
Date and time of observation: 
Fri, 02/21/2014 - 14:00
Location Map: 
United States
38° 43' 13.2024" N, 119° 58' 27.7392" W
See map: Google Maps
US



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

Snow on the northerly aspects remains cold. The snow surface consisted of mostly wind affected, wind scoured, and wind packed surface snow with some areas of shallow soft snow in more sheltered places on the N-NE aspects below treeline.  Hard wind slabs do still exist on near and above treeline N-NE aspects in this area. Below the surface the snowpack exhibited good bonding and observations and snowpit data did not reveal lingering signs of instability. NE winds had scoured some of the snow away and sculpted the surface of some of the NE-E aspects. On the sun exposed SE-S-SW aspects, 1-2 inches of soft melt-freeze snow had formed above frozen and supportable snow. This soft snow existed up to 9800 ft as of 2:30 pm.

Photo 1: Soft melt freeze surface snow (corn) on a SE aspect at 8600 ft. @ 1pm.

Photo 2: Wind affected surface snow on a NE aspect at 9600 ft. 

Video: ECTN on one of the hard wind slabs @ 8900 ft. on a N aspect. 

Snowpack photos: 
Snowpit videos (tests, etc): 

VID 20140221 134923

Weather Observations
Blowing Snow: 
No
Cloud Cover: 
Clear
Air temperature: 
Above Freezing
Wind Speed: 
Light
Precipitation: 
None
Air temperature trend: 
Cooling
Wind Direction: 
Northeast
Accumulation rate: 
None