Cold air, cold snow

Calm winds and snowing throughout our tour today. Accumulation rates up to S2 by noon today. While winds stayed calm at mid-elevations, the Essex US-2 weather station shows that by 10am today winds were gusting to 20 mph. At 2 pm, snow along the cross country trails showed signs of wind affect from the cold NE wind. We were able to initiate cracks in 5 centimeter thick wind slabs during our exit. At 6000 feet, we saw isolated areas of wind drifted snow but no surface effects from wind. Based on the amount of new snow on nearby tree branches (up to 10 centimeters), we guessed that the wind event occurred mid storm and was probably short lived. We had calm winds at mid-elevation and saw no evidence of wind slabs up to our high point at 6500 feet. On our exit, a moderate NE wind was blowing. Driving home on US2, we observed alot of blowing snow and strong gusts. At 6460 feet, we performed an ECT on the top 3 feet of snow. ECTN14. Failure occurred at the interface of new snow (35 centimeter total) and a thin (<1 inch), 1 finger hard crust layer. Our best guess is that this layer is a melt-freeze crust that formed during sunny weather on 1/28 or 1/29. Beneath this crust sits 13 centimeters of 4 finger hard, faceted snow. Beneath the facets (50 centimeters from the surface) is a 2 centimeter thick, pencil minus melt-freeze crust.