Firm Crusts on Judah

Frozen supportable crusts existed on all exposed aspects at most elevations until at least 12:30 pm today. On the sheltered and shaded northerly aspects some areas of soft snow 2-3 inches deep still remained. Cold temperatures and strong east wind kept the snow surface frozen on even the most sunny southerly aspects in near and above treeline terrain. Some melting and surface softening up to 1 inch deep did start to occur on the lower elevation SE-S aspects that remained sheltered from the east winds by noon.

The east winds remained strong enough to transport snow but very little soft snow existed on the windward so almost no snow transport was occurring today. The wind would scour the snow down to the firm rain crust within an hour in areas where my skin track broke through the surface crust on the north aspects. No snow plumes were visible along the crest today. Small shallow areas of wind deposited snow did exist on isolated W-SW aspects but the largest of these was only 3-4 inches deep, 4 ft wide, and extended down slope about 5 ft. On most of the leeward aspects very little evidence of wind deposited snow existed. 

some wind slabs remained on the N-NE aspects that are sheltered from the NE-E winds. Tests on these wind slabs did not reveal any signs of instability.

Photo 1: Firm frozen crusts on a S aspect at 8200 ft.

Photo 2-3: Wind scouring on N-NE-E aspects

Photo 4: New skin track scoured to crusts within an hour

Video: Strong winds that are not moving snow due to previous scouring