Tenki Diary 6 Jan 08

Weather and snowpack for the 24 hours to 7am on 6 Jan 08 at 860m asl: less than 1cm new snow, widely divergent temperature extremes, steady barometer, mostly clear sky and medium strong winds above 2000m.  We observed intense ridge transport from the SW off Norikura yesterday.  By 1300hr at least 30 tracks were put down the longer SE face  from Norikura Dake (2456m) to the plain at the closed tram station at 1900m.  We observed no signs of instability, despite a few groups descending together in bunches of three and four (!!) and one guy hard cutting skiers right directly across lee-side convex roll in search of a steeper cleaner line than those that went before him.  It was a classic avalanche trigger scenario that this time didn't have a bad ending.  His group tore down in less than 5 turns each so besides that incident, it was well ridden.

Forecast for today is warm and clear.  The long term forecast looks ugly for the weekend: rain to 2000m and 80kph winds.