Morning snow showers and afternoon sun

Snow showers observed with 2" of new snow in the morning, then the clouds cleared and the sun became strong. Light NE winds were not seen to be moving any surface snow. I went adjacent to a "repeat offender" path in this area to look for instabilities at the graupel layer. Along the way, we were able to kick off two shallow wind slabs just to the side of the main cornice along this ridge. One didn't propagate wide but ran downhill into lower angle terrain, and the other propagated wider than expected but didn't run downhill far. Both were just a few inches deep, on a density change below the wind slab that was only observed close to the cornice.

I found the expected graupel layer just above very firm snow, but two Extended Column Tests failed to propagate on it. My shovel was already well into the overlying slab when they produced non-propagating failures at the graupel. After each ECT, I used the remaining columns of snow to perform shovel shears, and they were clean and planar at the graupel. So I decided to try a Propagation Saw Test. This indicated propagation was likely on the graupel layer (PST 40/100 END down 40cm).

In the afternoon, it was warm in the sun but we didn't see signs of wet instabilities. Trees with new snow in the branches were not shedding snow, but we left by 1:30pm when there were still a few hours of potential warming.