Weisseck, Muhr Valley

Snowdrift accumulations are prone to disturbance and sometimes difficult to recognise

Snowdrift accumulations are prone to disturbance and sometimes difficult to recognise

The avalanche danger is moderate above 2200 m and low below. Above around 2200 m, slab avalanches can be triggered in some places by slight additional load in the wind slab and can occasionally be medium in size. Danger areas due to wind slabs increase with altitude and are located adjacent to the ridgeline, but also distant from ridgelines behind terrain edges and in gullies and bowls. In some cases, they are covered by a few centimetres of soft new fallen snow and are not clearly visible. In shady slopes at high altitudes, there are also isolated trigger points for small to medium-sized slab avalanches in persistent weak layers that are difficult to disturb.

The snow cover is highly variable and below average. Since Friday, around 10 cm, in some places up to 20 cm of soft, cold new fallen snow has fallen and in some cases been transported massively by the wind. Some of these cover older drift snow packs or form fresh, brittle snowdrift accumulations on the otherwise crusted can form snow surface. Prone to triggering, weak layers of soft layers are most likely to be found in the drift snow packs and at the transition to the melt-freeze crust. Below this is a sequence of faceted crystals and melt-freeze crusts, but the potential for fracture propagation is generally low due to the heavily built-up, transformed snow cover. In isolated places, however, a prone-to-triggering combination of weak layer and snow slab cannot be ruled out.

During the night, clouds will initially pass through, from which it may snow sporadically and unproductively. The clouds will clear from midnight. On Sunday, the sun will mostly shine unclouded with good visibility. In the morning, a moderate westerly wind will still be blowing, which may reach speeds of around 50 km/h at high altitudes. The wind will ease somewhat during the day. It is still very cold, at 2000 metres the temperature is an icy -13 to -10 degrees Celsius, at 3000 metres -19 to -16 degrees Celsius.

It remains cold, the new and wind slab snow is slow to settle.