No red flags seen.
Observation: Seward
Location: Lost Lake
Rode up the common lost lake trail (fireman’s entrance) near Seward to the Lost Lake zone and the weather station.
Successful weather station mission with cleaning off the anemometer (wind sensor).
Observer Comments
Weather
Sunny!
Light northerly winds.
Temps in the teens.
Snow surface
3-6mm of surface hoar on the surface up to our high point of 3700'. This was being blown around a bit up high and not uniform, blown over in many areas.
The top 6-8" is very loose snow and turning into near surface facets.
Snowpack
Nice right-side-up snowpack in sheltered zones that haven't seen wind effect. Great soft surface snow where it has not been tracked up. Above treeline and in areas with wind effect we found wind slabs, crusts and scoured zones. Wind slabs were stiff and stubborn, we could not get any to crack out on us.
We dug one pit at 2,400' on a south facing slope, snow depth 160cm (5').
No instability in top 4', ECTX
The Dec 1 crust was 50cm down and showed no signs of weakness. It was 10cm thick and despite beginning to decompose was still fairly hard (pencil to knife hard).
Mt Ascension with many tracks in the foreground
A look over Lost Lake to the north
5cm surface hoar on loose snow that is faceting out
Snow pit at 2,400'
A ginormous rime ball encases the anemometer!
Thanks to the guys for clearing off the rime
Success, a rime free weather station till the next storm...