Tenki Diary 15 Jan 08

Weather data for the 24 hours to 7am 15 Jan 08: another cold clear night, -12C at 860m asl.  Small surface hoar starting to form.  Partially sunny yesterday and clear today, barometer at 921mbar and steady for the last 3 hours.  Winds are light.  Yesterday at 2200m we observed extensive natural avalanche activity around Norikura Dake in Hakuba.  See here for data.  It is well worth closely comparing the two photographs! The snowpack is mostly ice and crust on the surface or within the top 40cm in areas of loading.  With these cold temps over the coming days I will be looking for larger surface hoar and also faceting of existing snow grains near the surface and near the buried crust.