South Coast

The heavy rain over the next few days will make the snowpack unstable. Conservative terrain use and avoiding overhead hazard is critical.

Moderate - Due to the number of field observations

Warm and wet on Wednesday - Thursday. Cooling with light precipitation on Friday. WEDNESDAY: Rain (50-70mm) / Strong southerly winds becoming moderate / Freezing level around 2000m / High temperatures to +4 Celsius. THURSDAY: Rain (30-50mm) / Moderate southeasterly winds / Freezing level around 1900 m. FRIDAY: Mostly cloudy with isolated flurries (local accumulations 10-15cm) / High temperatures to +1 Celsius / Light-moderate southerly winds / Freezing level around 1200 m.

Small loose wet avalanches to Size 1.5 were observed on steep solar (south) aspects on Monday.

The snow from late last week (15-25cm) has consolidated well at treeline and below. This makes 50-70 cm of cumulative storm snow which so far has been bonding well to a knife hard crust buried Feb 3rd. That said, recent snowpack tests near the Cypress ski area gave sudden planar, propagation-likely results down 70cm on the Feb 3rd widespread crust layer. This may become a sliding layer on Wednesday with the heavy rain.In the alpine, where the precipitation fell as snow, the storm slabs have taken longer to settle out and still are a concern: Dig down to test the bond of the more recent snow layers. The mid and lower snowpack are settled and well bonded with the average snowpack depth at treeline 250-300 cm.