Relay Peak mid Storm Observations

+/-45cm of new snow in the Relay Peak area at 9000' at 3:00PM.   It was snowing very heavily and we were unable to see ridges due to low visability.   The wind was strong with very obvious, heavy loading on N/NE/E aspects.  Snow drifts were 3-6 feet on Relay Peak rd.  A snow pit produced unstable results at the crust buried on 2/18, due to buried near surface facets that are currently buried under ~75cm in this area with much more new snow forecasted in the next 48 hours.  We also saw wind slab instabilty between the new storm snow and old snow from 2/26 that produced results 40cm down.   

Pic 1 shows the planer results seen within a commpression test on the near surface facets

Pic 2 shows the facets that were causing the failure/instability down 72cm