Corn Snow on Southerly Aspects

We toured in the Silver Peak area today to look at general snowpack conditions and to see if snow surface softening was occurring at the lower elevations.  A solid overnight freeze was present with firm snow surface conditions this morning.  NE winds decreased through the day along with warming air temperatures.  We found lots of variable snow with a variety of firm and breakable crusts.  In wind protected treed northerly terrain, but open enough to be away from past tree drippings, soft and mostly consistent snow was found.  A mix of decomposing old surface crusts and near surface facets made for edgeable and mostly soft conditions.  We had good corn snow on SE-S aspects during the mid day hours from 8000' down to 7200'.  We experienced 1-2'' of soft corn snow on top of a supportable base at 12:30pm.   All other aspects that were previously wind scoured remained firm and shiny.  No wet snow instabilities were observed today.  The combination of well below freezing overnight temperatures and a cool NE flow delayed softening until midday and prevented any loose wet instabilities from forming.