J2Ski Forum Posts and Replies by Iceman

scottdog28 wrote:ah, fanks caron-a! cant wait.
ill have one for you at the loop bar then!!

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:

getjim wrote:Ross. Great excitement your next post will be your 1000th.

Boy, you don't half waffle. :wink: