Naturals, remote triggers, and forecasters tackled by wind slabs, Oh My!

We traveled at mid-elevations in the Middle Fork and found touchy soft slabs in wind drifted areas.  These weren't quite "business-as-usual" storm instabilities, though, and we stepped back to more conservative terrain than originally planned.

• 5" to 8" of low-density storm snow from last night and today. Snowfall ended mid-day.  Generally, we observed calm or light winds where we traveled, but a period of moderate gusts mid-day was just enough to spur a round of natural avalanches in our basin.
• We observed a dozen or so natural and human triggered soft slabs and lots of shooting cracks in wind drifted terrain.  Slabs were mostly D1 to D1.5 at mid-elevations and D2 at upper elevations.  They failed in areas where winds loaded or stiffened the snow surface. The slabs failed up to a foot deep on both midstorm low-density layers and on near-surface facets on or a few inches above the 2/1 crust.  They ran fairly long for their relatively small starting size because of all of the soft, fluffy snow in their tracks.  We also triggered and observed numerous natural point release avalanches. 
• Some of the unusual behavior that highlights the troublesome persistent weak layers that just got buried:  I remotely triggered one slab from 60 feet away.  I also triggered one slab that broke surprisingly higher on a small rollover than expected. It knocked me off my skis and carried me a few yards downslope before coming to a stop. Both of these slides failed on near-surface facets above the 2/1 crust.  We also experienced a loud, rumbling collapse while probing around on a fresh debris pile 5 feet deep.  I think this was from one of the recent crusts collapsing under the additional weight of avalanche debris: foreshadowing for what conditions might look like in the future with thicker, heavier slabs.
• The 2/5 freezing rain crust is spotty here.  In areas where it formed, we got soft, small collapses underfoot from weak facets collapsing between the two crusts.  In wind-sheltered areas, there wasn't enough cohesive snow for this to form slab instabilities, but again, foreshadowing for troubles ahead? 
• We had good views of alpine bowls of Nyack and the East face of Penrose and there were no recent deep slab avalanches. We gave that type of terrain, and its runouts, a wide berth today. 
• We sought wind-sheltered slopes with manageable terrain consequences and managed for point release instabilities on steeper pitches.