March snow assessment — Part 3

The last part of the snow assessment (23 March 2011), we'll look at just a couple of the many snow cross-sections taken. In the first photograph, we can see one of the depths of general snow cover.
It was measured next to northeast corner of the test antenna on the ground. The depth is approximately 80cm. The small lines on the rule are 1cm, and the large lines are every 5cm. A cross section was checked and Tero noted that there was first hard snow, grainy snow (darker areas), again hard, then grainy, hard and again grainy on the bottom. This is typical of the way that the snow is built up in layers during varying conditions of snow, wind and fair conditions.

In the next image, we can see the depth of snow on the top of one of the tiles.

Here is there 1-2cm of dense icy snow against the tile surface, with a second layer of 15-20cm of lightly packed snow over the top. Tero reported that there had been significant clearing of the snow due to the strong winds.


Photos: Tero Raita.