A question on Suncups

Yes, wind smooths out suncups (or prevents their formation). I've just started paying attention to this, which is most clear where a regular terrain-influenced wind (for example, a catabatic downslope breeze) provides spectacularly smooth skiing immediately adjacent to calmer slopes which are moderately suncupped or worse. This seems to explain some of the predictable differences, repeated year after year, between nearby slopes.

Less clear to me is the effect of rain, which sometimes seems to wash away existing suncups, but sometimes just makes the runnels worse without appreciably affecting the cups. This observation might involve large inputs from my imagination, or it might be the result of rain accompanied by wind, or of other factors entirely.

In the spirit of scientific inquiry, I'm going to try to get out to the Sholes Glacier this weekend.

Mark