In light of the current situation, it is naturally difficult to know what level of knowledge is required to be able to write something like the WeatherBlog or SnowFlurry in an understandable way. When you think about snow, it starts with whether the majority of readers know and, above all, understand the difference between the types of transformation, have the definitions of the hazard levels in their heads or understand the difference between brittle and non-brittle drifting snow. In order to be able to follow the SnowFlurry, it is obligatory to have read at least one book on snow & avalanche science. Here we refer to the modern book by the PG editorial team: PowderGuide: Avalanches, risk check for freeriders.
Definition of tension & strength
Tension is a common word in avalanche reports, but also relatively abstract for some people when it comes to snow. That's why we google our way through life and get the following results: "Stress: force inside an elastic body that acts against its shape created by the action of external forces." This is a general formulation, but there are also different types of stress in the snowpack: Primarily tensile, compressive and shear stresses.
Since the consensus these days with regard to slab avalanches is that the key point in the descent of one is the "fracture", the snow pusher may like the following formulation from a less scientific online dictionary, but for the purposes of basic imagination this is certainly sufficient: "The strength of a material describes the maximum stress that can be applied by mechanical loads before failure occurs. Failure can be a plastic (permanent) deformation or even a fracture. Snow behaves elastically (returns to its original shape), plastically (retains its shape) or produces ductile or brittle fractures when deformed. This brings us back to a central point in the concept of snow and avalanches: The snowpack is a framework of coherent crystals with air pockets. As long as the framework is connected, you can trample on it - as soon as it breaks apart somewhere, a part of it can collapse and thus continue to break and cause an avalanche.
