Snow and Avalanche Glossary

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Crust

Also: Rain Crust, Sun Crust, Wind Crust

A crust is a hard layer of snow where liquid water has refrozen into grain fabric. Crusts can result from sun, rain or wind.

A Rain Crust is formed by the freezing of infiltrated rain water.

A Sun Crust is formed by the freezing of sun melted surface snow.

Because they contain more ice than other layers in the snowpack they can alter the temperature gradient locally, and kinetic growth grain forms (such as facets or sugar snow) sometimes form more readily adjacent to a crust.

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