2-4'' New Snow in Emerald Bay Chutes

Location Name: 
South Side Jakes Peak
Region: 
West Shore Area
Date and time of observation: 
Sun, 01/06/2013 - 12:00
Location Map: 
United States
38° 58' 1.326" N, 120° 7' 2.1936" W
See map: Google Maps
US


Red Flags: 
Recent loading by new snow, wind, or rain
Observation made by: Professional Observer
Snowpit Observations
More detailed information about the snowpack: 

2-4'' of new snow in the Emerald Bay Chutes.  This new snow sits on a variety of old snow surface conditions:  unconsolidated snow in protected NE-E aspects, variety of supportable and breakable crusts on E aspects and firm supportable crusts on S aspects.  This new snow was failing easily on the old snow/new snow interface (loose snow avalanches) and sluffing off easily and running fast downslope, this occured on most slopes over the 35 degree range.  Most sluffs were running on top of the old snow surface sun crust but also occured with softer unconsolidated snow as the bed surface.  I looked at 6 different areas from elevation range of 7000-9200' on NE-E-SE aspects, I only found 1 spot that had some small (1-1.5mm) but discontinuous surface hoar buried under the new snow.  This was a protected East aspect gully at 8500'.

No signs of wind transport overnight or through this morning into the early afternoon.

 

Photo #1 and #2:  New snow sluffs(loose snow avalanches) in steeper terrain.

Snowpack photos: 
Weather Observations
Blowing Snow: 
Cloud Cover: 
75% of the sky covered by clouds
Air temperature: 
Below Freezing
Wind Speed: 
Light
Precipitation: 
Snow
Air temperature trend: 
Static
Wind Direction: 
Southwest
Accumulation rate: 
Less than 1 in. per hour
More detailed information about the weather: 

Scattered light snow in the morning hours.  By mid day the sun was coming out, winds were light all morning on ridgetops.