SOLPEX IOP5: Alta-Collins Lake Effect

With the transition to lake-effect occurring at around 0700 UTC (0100 AM MDT), it appears that about 4" of the snow and .46" of the snow-water equivalent that fell at Alta-Collins overnight was lake-effect related.

That's a fairly high water content snowfall (11.5%), which I suspect could be related to graupel formation from the convection.  We'll have to see if our friends at Alta can post up some snow crystal images from Tim Garrett's camera system onto their snowflake showcase.

Update 9:05 AM: Just got a note from Alta and they report a round of graupel with the front and then again from 2-4 AM with the stronger lake band, with "wind-whipped" crystals between.