Provo

Lawinenprobleme

• 

  Loose Wet

  N

  NE

  E

  SE

  S

  SW

  W

  NW

  • Hochgebirge
  • Waldgrenze
  • Unterhalb der Waldgrenze

  Wahrscheinlichkeit

  Possible

  Größe

  2

  Today's strong sunshine and warm temperatures will make the snow surface wet, but it will take a little longer than yesterday since an ice crust on the snow surface from last night's refreeze will have to melt first. As the day heats up, wet avalanches of loose snow will become possible. These wet snow avalanches will mainly involve the new snow that fell Friday/Saturday.

  Pay attention to the snow becoming wet, then look for balls of snow rolling downhill and growing in size and occurring more frequently. Seeing these clues will tell you that loose wet avalanches may start happening. They tend to happen more near exposed rocks that absorb heat from the sun and help warm the snow faster.

  Photo below shows these roller balls under exposed rocks (E. Romer)

• 

  Persistent Slabs

  N

  NE

  E

  SE

  S

  SW

  W

  NW

  • Hochgebirge
  • Waldgrenze
  • Unterhalb der Waldgrenze

  Wahrscheinlichkeit

  Possible

  Größe

  4

  Unfortunately, avalanches can still break near the ground on a persistent weak layer of old faceted snow that caused many avalanches about two weeks ago. The odds of triggering one of these slides has gone down significantly but the consequences remain severe. The tricky part of the situation is that in areas further north that received a lot more snow, the snowpack is much deeper and triggering a slide on this layer is very difficult. The Provo area mountains received less snow during the Valentine's storms and had less snow on the ground prior to those storms. All of this means that a rider can still impact this layer and trigger an avalanche.

  One complicating factor - Many slopes produced big avalanches two weeks ago and will have maybe 2 feet of snow on top of the bed surface. We haven't heard of any avalanches repeating on these slopes, but I would be hesitant to totally trust them without doing a thorough assessment which could be difficult because the only way to examine the snowpack on these slopes will be to go into the avalanche starting zone.