Significant snowfall accumulation is forecasted for our area in the next 36 hours.
Expect storm slabs to form and new snow to be transported by associated wind.
Keep terrain choices conservative during this time.
By Saturday morning our region could see as much as 30 cm of new snow. This will be sitting on a range of surfaces that could include wind slabs, surface hoar, and / or a melt freeze crust. See snowpack summary for more details.
Faceted grains make up the basal snowpack and are gaining strength very slowly. This layer has been relatively quiet recently but can still be triggered with a heavier load, like a cornice fall for example, and in areas with a thinner snowpack. Any avalanche triggered this deep will likely be large and destructive.
Avalanche control with the use of explosives produced three size 1.5 avalanches from wind slabs in the Fernie area on Wednesday. Ski cutting on Monday and Tuesday yielded more size 1 avalanches also produced from wind slabs.
Sunday saw a cornice fail naturally but it did not trigger buried weak layers in this instance. Even so, it's a great reminder to be mindful and to practice avoidance of overhead hazards.
Although they have not produced avalanches in the last few days, a deep persistent slab problem still affects the region and should steer you away from thin or variable depth snowpack locations and shallow rocky start zones throughout the region.
New snow will be falling on wind slabs about 1800 m. Below treeline a surface hoar layer will be getting buried in sheltered areas and on south-facing aspects, a melt-freeze crust can be found getting covered over.
A crust/facet layer, 2 to 15 cm thick at treeline is 50 to 90 cm below the surface. Where it's thickest, it caps the settled and consolidated mid-snowpack.
Another crust/facet layer is down 70 to 150 cm. Below this crust, the basal snowpack is weak and faceted. The total snowpack depth ranges between 90 and 250 cm.
Thursday Night
Cloudy, 6 to 12 cm accumulation, winds southwest 20 to 30 km/h, treeline temperatures around -6 C with freezing levels getting up to 1300 m.
Friday
Cloudy, 5 to 10 cm accumulation in the morning with up to another 10 cm in the evening, winds north 20 km/h, treeline temperatures around -5 C.
Saturday
A mix of sun and cloud, trace accumulation ending in the morning, winds northeast 30 km/h, treeline temperatures dropping down to -20 C.
Sunday
Mostly sunny, possible trace accumulation, winds northeast 20 to 30 km/h, treeline temperatures getting down to -25 C.
More details can be found in the Mountain Weather Forecast.
