Tenki Diary 16 Jan 08

Weather data for the 24 hours to 7am 16 Jan: Warming trend since the low temp of -10 at 7am yesterday, 7am today it was only –2C. New snow in the last 24 hours fell mostly overnight whilst it was still cold and resulted in the lowest density snow so far this season: 42kg/m3, or 4.6% water. It would be deeper and dry above 2000m, however sitting atop existing slab and/or crust. I am avoiding backcountry travel in avalanche terrain today.

Yesterday I toured up to 1900m, perfect clear skies, no wind and –5C. The extensive wind scouring down to the rain crust was very obvious. There is ice and crust everywhere. This new snow won’t stick to it at all: too dry. Perhaps it will blow away and form slab, perhaps it will be covered by denser snow. Both are bad. Hopefully the weather will warm significantly and follow through with another large warm snowfall on top of this crust.