Observations from Meiss

Warm and sunny day at Meiss. We aimed for cold slopes hoping to find some facet skiing, but instead found a breakable crust on top of a thin layer of near surface facets. Warm slopes did have wet snow at the surface, but no natural activity was observed on these aspects today. Moderate SW winds may have been cooling the snow surface just enough to prevent surface instabilities in this area. Recent surface hoar at the surface was observed to be decomposed on both cold and warm slopes.

Pic 1: Surprised to get a sudden planar result on buried surface hoar down 25cm. I may not have even done a CT here (pindrop), except that a shovel tilt also had a clean and planar result at this depth and revealed the SH layer to be intact. An ECT did not propagate. Other groups in the same area reported digging without finding intact SH. No other signs of instability were observed at this depth today. Recent, natural cornice fall was observed near where we found the intact surface hoar, and the small load did not trigger anything on the SH layer.

Pic 2: Sastrugi from previous E winds melting and deforming in the heat.

Pic 3: Although there was wet snow at the surface, kicking this sagging cornice did not entrain additional snow. Warm slopes had a strong layer down about 8cm.