Wet snow on wind protected south slopes of Mt. Judah.

The cloud cover from last night cleared early enough this morning that my partner and I headed for the south aspects of Mt. Judah to observe the amount of snow surface melt that was occurring today. On the ridgetops, fairly steady moderate speed NE winds were blowing during the mid day hours. As expected the wind created sufficient convectional cooling of the snow surface to keep it frozen on all wind exposed slopes despite air temperatures in the upper 30s to low 40s. Once we descended about 200 vertical feet below the ridgetop, we quickly got into wind protection and 1 inch of surface wet snow over supportable base. No signs of instability observed while on tour.