Soft Snow, Wind Scoured Surfaces, and New Snow on Silver Peak

When we started our tour into Silver Peak light snow (S1) was falling. After a while, snowfall intensity waned and the sun poked through the clouds. This period of sunshine gave way to a more intense wave of snow showers (S5 at times). The weather continued to go through cycles of snow showers and periods of brief clearing through the day. Some of the snow showers produced more intense snowfall and graupel and others were light. 

We stopped numerous times on our skin in areas where surface hoar usually forms to see if any of the surface hoar that formed earlier this week had been buried by the new snow. We could not find any conclusive evidence of surface hoar under the 1-2 inches of new snow that existed in this area. We did not see any signs of any instabilities in below treeline terrain. Snow on the northerly aspects remained cold and soft. Digging below the surface revealed a right side up snowpack with denser snow below the sold soft surface snow. E and SE aspects had thin breakable sun crusts on them at the lower elevations. 

Once we got into near treeline terrain we started to see some signs of previous wind transport from both the SW and NE wind directions, but we could not find any signs of lingering instability with the wind slabs. During some of the snow showers the wind would pick up and some wind transport did occur. In more exposed terrain along the ridge, some areas had been scoured back to the rain crust and were now covered by up to 2 inches of new snow from today creating variable dust on crust conditions in those areas. 

Photo 1: Newly fallen graupel.

Photo 2: Wind features pointing both directions with cornices in the background.

Photo 3: Our skin track refilled within an hour from a combination of new snow and light wind loading.

Photo 4: New snow had barely covered the previously scoured surfaces leaving variable dust on crust conditions in some exposed areas.

Photo 5: Settlement cracks indicating consolidation in the recent snow.