Developing sun crust and deep snow on ridgetops.

We toured the Incline Peak and Slab Cliffs area today to monitor snow surface warming and look for lingering wind slab instability. Less cloud cover and more frequent sun breaks than forecast allowed for some minor snow surface warming to occur with below freezing air temperatures and the strong solar radiation from the mid/late March sun. Small (D1) isolated hybrid loose wet/dry ski/snowboard triggered avalanches were seen in a couple of areas on SE-S aspects (photo 3). A sun crust was forming on the snow surface on the SE-E aspects we traveled up to our highpoint of travel at 9,700' (photo 2). This sun crust will likely be a breakable crust on most solar aspects tomorrow.

We saw very little in the way of lingering problematic wind slab instability in this specific area. Of note, we saw a good 2 feet of storm snow on the ridgetops that is available for drifting with the next moderate or stronger wind event (photo 1).

A few convective snow showers were observed during the midday and early afternoon hours, some of which deposited large graupel on the snow surface.