Several days of sustained southerly winds have created pockets of dense wind slabs at the mid and upper elevations. Although this wind-deposited snow can mostly be found on leeward aspects facing northwest through east, strong and gusty winds can deposit snow on any aspect, especially at the upper elevations. Continued gusty winds today will have fresh snowfall to work with, creating new pockets of wind slabs.

In my Monday field work on Ben Lomond (observation), I was finding the wind slabs to be unresponsive to stability tests, but some of these hard slabs were sitting on top of weaker faceted snow that formed on the snow surface late last week, creating a situation which may allow someone to get well onto a wind-loaded slope before it avalanches.