The 5 cm of new snow that fell overnight brought a welcome softening and smoothing to the formerly frozen and rough snow surface. In today's above freezing temperatures and intermittent sun, the new snow became a moist cushioning layer over the crust. Skiing was much improved, though the soft layer is still too thin to get a snowmachine to edge in.

We did no profile or block tests today, since there is not enough new snow to be a concern and the thick and solidly frozen layers beneath have about as low an avalanche danger as there is. But we did dig a bit to check the rate of warming and sample the variability of the faceted melt freeze layer.

The snow at our higher 730 m (2395') and sunnier (SW aspect) test site was quite different than the snow at our shaded site low in Heavenly Valley two days ago. The density of the faceted melt freeze layers was lower, at 310 - 340 kg/m3, the melt freeze layers were thinner (only 35 cm), and the temperatures were warming rapidly from -1° at the surface to -5° at 40 cm beneath the surface, a gradient of just 10°/m, or barely enough to produce faceting. The top 1 cm had both facets and striations, and the rest of the melt freeze layer had facets, just as at the other site, but the facets were already less crisp and more rounded as the temperature gradient decreases.

The new snow is not well bonded to the underlying crust yet, but the thawing temperatures should allow it to bond fairly rapidly.