Corn and Crusts on Castle Peak

Location Name: 
Castle Peak
Region: 
Donner Summit Area
Date and time of observation: 
Mon, 01/15/2018 - 14:30
Location Map: 
United States
39° 21' 54.828" N, 120° 21' 29.916" W
See map: Google Maps
US


Red Flags: 
Observation made by: Forecaster
Snowpit Observations
More detailed information about the snowpack: 

Northerly aspects held mostly firm snow surfaces today on Castle Peak with a few areas of softer snow mixed in among the sometimes breakable and sometimes supportable crusts. On sun-exposed aspects like the S-SW-W aspects the snow surface softened during the afternoon and 2 to 5 cm (1 to 2 inches) of soft wet corn snow existed on top of a supportable snowpack. I dug a snowpit next to a previous pit from Friday to see how the moist persistent weak layer has changed. While tests targetting this layer still yielded unstable results and observations still showed it remaining loose and wet, the tests mostly failed at higher scores. The snow above this layer has also gotten stronger and more cohesive. Other than these isolated unstable test results, I did not observe any additional signs of instability.

Snowpit or crown profile photo or graph: 
Weather Observations
Blowing Snow: 
Cloud Cover: 
75% of the sky covered by clouds
Air temperature: 
Above Freezing
Wind Speed: 
Moderate
Precipitation: 
Air temperature trend: 
Warming
Wind Direction: 
South
Accumulation rate: 
More detailed information about the weather: 

Some periods of sun today mixed with periods of increasing cloud cover.