Tenki Diary 17 Dec 07

8am on Monday the 17th of December: The 14-16 Dec storm is over. Before settlement it produced 86cm of new snow at 860m, which settled to 60cm. Total water equivalent was 66mm (if it was rain, that’s how much would have fallen). Last night was the coldest so far this season, -8C at my station.  Another medium sized storm will arrive tonight, perhaps another 30cm in it.  Then warming over the week.

Yesterday I didn’t go higher than 1600m and there was a lot of snow available for wind transport, walking resulted in belly button deep battle. Unfortunately, the winds picked up so much that Goryu ski resort was forced to close all the upper lifts. I would have estimated the gusts to be 50kph and the sustained wind to be perhaps 40kph, out of the W and NW. Plenty of snow was being transported and deposited quite quickly on lee slopes. Bottom line: I am expecting top and cross loaded terrain. I don’t know how long the wind blew for as it was calm done in the valley. But a conservatively I think that there was too much new snow and too much wind in a very short period.