Reactive storm slabs in the flathead range.

Today we went into the Flathead Range to assess storm snow instabilities, search around for any buried persistent weak layers, and look for recent avalanches. 

• At mid elevations, about 6 inches of new, low density snow is sitting atop a supportable rain crust from Tuesday. 
• Rain crust reached up to roughly 6500' where it became very thin and breakable.
• At upper elevations we noticed recent wind drifted snow. We found an older generation of cornices drifted towards northerly aspects, and new, more reactive cornices drifted onto southerly aspects. This is from a quick burst of snow and northerly winds on Tuesday.
• We found reactive slabs on south aspects near ridgelines and cross loaded terrain features. These were roughly a foot thick and propagated up to 40 or 50 feet. I would anticipate that slabs were reactive, but not as thick on northerly facing terrain. 
• No evidence of buried persistent weak layers. 
• Poor visibility limited views of surround peaks. We did notice 5 loose wet avalanches and could spot debris chunks off of a steep, southeast face at upper elevations.