DOT&PF did explosive delivery work this morning with their 105 mm howitzer on the avalanche paths above Thane Road. Four slabs large enough to be visible below the 600 - 700 m fog level were released, all moderate in size. None reached the road, but all released sizable areas of weakness that otherwise would have presented problems in the next few storm cycles.

Three slides were on T011 Snowslide Creek and one was on T017 Cross Bay Creek. The slide on Cross Bay Creek came from the back corner of the upper bowl, and pushed a large debris flow and dust cloud beyond the upper bench that usually stops slides there. That long runout indicates that a relatively large area released up in the fog.

After the shoot, we did the Juneau Rounds, our standard transect of the urban paths. We found small R2D2 size debris piles on J010 Behrends (just below the diagonal gully to 200 m), J003 Gnarly, J004 Chop Gully, J005 Green Weenie, and J007 Snowslide Gulch. No starting zones were visible, but all appeared to have come from the lower slopes at or below today's 500 m snow level. It is likely that most were rain-triggered wet point releases rather than slabs.

These observations indicate that slab instability is present at higher elevations, but not yet releasing naturally. A natural avalanche cycle is in progress, but is still limited to small, mostly point release, slides at lower elevations.

The slopes above Thane Road were largely cleaned out by last weekend's NE winds. Many small slabs ran naturally, and most other starting zone areas were scoured by wind to the last rain crust. The slides released by artillery fire were in the areas where new snow had loaded enough, or in the few unscoured and unreleased areas left from the weekend.

The other Juneau area paths were not wind scoured over the weekend and still have faceted and windloaded snow over facets beneath the new snow from this week, so are likely to have larger weak areas.