Northwest Coastal

Although avalanche danger has decreased post-storm, take a cautious approach and gather your own snow pack information before committing to exposed terrain.

Fair - Due to the number of field observations

Light snowfall should taper off by late Saturday. Winds remain light to moderate from the south. The freezing level is falling towards valley bottom.

A naturally triggered avalanche cycle was observed in response to the recent storm. At low elevations, many of these were wet and dug deep, failing to ground, up to size 2.5. At treeline and above, storm slabs and wind slabs were reported. In the north, large explosives triggered slabs up to size 3 failing on the November crust layer, with wide propagations at alpine elevations.

Heavy rain which recently saturated the upper snowpack resulted in wet, loose, and cohesionless surface snow as high as alpine elevations in the southern part of the region. As freezing levels drop, this may freeze into a solid surface crust with fresh wet snow stuck on top, depending on elevation. Meanwhile in the high alpine and as low as treeline elevations further north, up to 70 cm of recent snow and wind has formed new storm slabs. These have overloaded previous weaknesses buried within the snowpack, such as the mid-November crust-facet layer.