860m asl weather data for the 24 hours to 7am: max temp +1C, min temp –12C set at 7am yesterday with a warming trend since then. New snow 3cm and still falling at less than 1cm per hour.

Field weather observations: yesterday morning at 1500m – 2000m in the range behind Hakuba Goryu I found surface hoar up to 10mm in size. The day was warm, with sun in the morning and sun through thin clouds in the afternoon. This might have destroyed the surface hoar on solar aspects. However there was almost zero wind, extremely still. With no wind, the shaded aspects will still have large surface hoar crystals. The bottom line is that the snow that fell last night could well have fallen on and thus protected north aspect surface hoar up to 10mm in length. That scenario could potentially create a serious weak layer in the snow pack that may be further buried by the storm forecast for Wednesday night.