snows been nicked

am i suffering pre ski nerves ,iam searching every site for snow at chamrousse ,but every time i look the amount is going down,60cm on the top now ,it was 120 cm before christmas. where has it gone !!!!! :(,its not been above freezing for weeks ,who,s nicked it put it back please .what is the snow gods mobile number.im putting an order for 80cm before jan 17

I've got a bit in the back garden if you want it.

G

that's normal, snow will tend to compact. In simple terms, when it falls you've got big flakes with complicated shapes, low density basically.

Then you can get some mechanical influence, for example wind transport or plain simple loading where just the crystals lying on each other alters them. Those mechanical effects will reduce the crystal size and pack them which will make the snow more dense.

Then you've an energy flux, mostly that means solar effects from the sun directly or on a cloud day just infrared radiation, the flip side of that is heat loss, so infrared radiation back out and evaporation etc. That's what flux means in this context, energy in and out. Like the mechanical effect this makes the snow more dense, but unlike mechanical effects it doesn't always make it more stable.

There's some other effects, dry snow kinetic growth, dry snow metamorphism and melt metamorphism, but basically the point is this, once snow has fallen that's the start of a process that goes on until spring and that process is more complex than "snow falls - snow melts" :D

So, is 60cm of high density snow worse than 120cm of unpacked snow? not necessarily, sounds like they have a packed base there, some fresh snow would only make it perfect :lol:

ise that is just what i needed to know ,chamrousse has good packed snow and a little more will make it perfect ,good man ise, : :D,i can calm down now but i will still keep watching the snow reports for the big one, :oops: got a little embaresed earlier my daughter caught me in my bathrobe at the top of the stairs with skis ,boots , & poles on,called me mad ,she may be correct , but i luv ski time

tomski wrote:am i suffering pre ski nerves ,iam searching every site for snow at chamrousse ,but every time i look the amount is going down,60cm on the top now ,it was 120 cm before christmas. where has it gone !!!!! :(,its not been above freezing for weeks ,who,s nicked it put it back please .what is the snow gods mobile number.im putting an order for 80cm before jan 17

*hands you some of Ohio's finest white stuff, ermm snow*

ise wrote:that's normal, snow will tend to compact. In simple terms, when it falls you've got big flakes with complicated shapes, low density basically.

Then you can get some mechanical influence, for example wind transport or plain simple loading where just the crystals lying on each other alters them. Those mechanical effects will reduce the crystal size and pack them which will make the snow more dense.

Then you've an energy flux, mostly that means solar effects from the sun directly or on a cloud day just infrared radiation, the flip side of that is heat loss, so infrared radiation back out and evaporation etc. That's what flux means in this context, energy in and out. Like the mechanical effect this makes the snow more dense, but unlike mechanical effects it doesn't always make it more stable.

There's some other effects, dry snow kinetic growth, dry snow metamorphism and melt metamorphism, but basically the point is this, once snow has fallen that's the start of a process that goes on until spring and that process is more complex than "snow falls - snow melts" :D

So, is 60cm of high density snow worse than 120cm of unpacked snow? not necessarily, sounds like they have a packed base there, some fresh snow would only make it perfect :lol:

This touches on a question that I have had in my head for years, now I feel is the time to ask it.

I am off to Morzine on Saturday for a few days, it says the snow at the top is 140cm. Is this 140cm packed or 140cm 'loose'

A simple question, one that has taken me 3 years to try and find the answer to....can you help out there? :mrgreen:

Iceman wrote:
This touches on a question that I have had in my head for years, now I feel is the time to ask it.

I am off to Morzine on Saturday for a few days, it says the snow at the top is 140cm. Is this 140cm packed or 140cm 'loose'

A simple question, one that has taken me 3 years to try and find the answer to....can you help out there? :mrgreen:

sorry, I don't think today's going to be the day :lol:

Typically the measurements are just how far up a measuring pole the snow is that day, you need the descriptive report to get any sense at all of what the snow is. Here in Switzerland you can read snow pack profile reports collated by SLF (Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research) taken by people around the country, these are based on ram penetrometer profiles, that's basically a tube device you put in the snow that measures resistance to force through the snow pack, that produces a fairly standard report but it needs some training to read, this is an example at Saas Grund a few days back :



More information than most people want :lol:

Pretty stable, failure at RB6 using a rutschblock test so reasonably safe to ski although there's a high temperature profile there so it will be interesting to see later reports from that station and how it develops.

So, reading between the lines the reports can be accurate or miles off?

140cm could be 140cm of loose stuff - meaning 70cm(ish)of packed stuff?

so half everything and that is worse case scenario....?

That graph certainly looks 'interesting'