Developing loose wet problem on E and S aspects of Mt. Judah.

We went to Mt. Judah today to look at snow surface refreeze and developing loose wet problems on E-SE-S aspects today.

Last night's snow surface refreeze occurred during above freezing air temperatures, fully reliant on radiational cooling of the snowpack under clear skies. As expected, a thin and weak superficial refreeze occurred in areas under forest canopy on solar aspects. Only the top 2 inches of the snowpack had refrozen with residual wet snow from the day before below it.

On open solar aspect slopes, the refreeze was much stronger with a firm 4 inch layer of snow surface refreeze. There was still about 1 inch of residual wet snow below this surface crust before reaching the very firm consolidated, frozen snowpack below.

Ski cuts on S-SE aspect terrain around 7,800' at about 11:30 am produced some tiny loose wet sluffs, indicating that the loose wet avalanche problem was developing and would be present and capable of human triggered avalanches as the afternoon progressed.