The story overnight was strong southerly winds. For the next 24 hours, a closed low spinning off the coast of California will send bands of precipitation into our area creating mostly scattered showers. Today will be mostly cloudy and windy with moderate to strong southerly winds and perhaps a couple of inches of snow. By Friday night, the low will begin tracking through the 4 Corners region with our best shot at snow on Saturday. Most of the emphasis from this powerful system is on an upslope event for the mountains above Denver where several feet of snow are likely. I'm still uncertain what it will mean for us and think we could see anywhere from 6"-12".

The snowpack is highly variable, with large differences across aspects and elevations. Overall, warm temperatures over the last several days and even some rain yesterday evening followed by a hard freeze overnight has strengthened the snowpack. The 3" of fairly dense (0.2" SWE) overnight snow won't increase the danger, however, gusty southerly winds have formed shallow slabs in open areas at higher elevations.

Yesterday in the La Sals, slopes near and below treeline on W-S-E aspects had moist snow throughout much of the profile underneath crusts of variable thickness ranging from 1-5 cm. On more northerly aspects, the snow remains dry, and snow surfaces consists of dense, settled powder in sheltered areas. In more open areas, the wind has redistributed snow and riding conditions are quite variable. Weak snow near the ground is present on NW-NE-SE aspects at higher elevations.