Loose Wet
- Hochgebirge
- Waldgrenze
- Unterhalb der Waldgrenze
- Wahrscheinlichkeit
- Possible
- Größe
- 2
Air temperatures above 7,000' at 6 am this morning ranged from the upper 20s to mid 40s. In areas where air temperatures were at or above freezing, snow surface refreeze last night will have been entirely dependent on radiational cooling under clear skies. This superficial refreeze is expected to be a fairly thin in most areas and will melt quickly this morning.
The snowpack on E-SE-S-SW aspects remains in a transitional state. Under the relatively weaker and lower angle early February sun, daily melt-freeze cycles have been insufficient to produce corn snow conditions. What exists instead is a few inches of surface wet snow on top of colder, dry, less consolidated remnant storm snow, sitting on top of rain crust.
Once the thin ice layer of overnight snow surface refreeze is gone, marginally supportable conditions exist and the snowpack structure is conducive to human triggered loose wet avalanche activity. Snowpack failure has been occurring at the interface between the surface wet snow and the colder drier snow below it. In most areas this has manifested as human triggered roller balls and pinwheels. In more isolated areas human triggered loose wet avalanches large enough to bury or injure a person are possible in steep terrain. A few loose wet avalanches in recent days have been observed to entrain dry snow down to the rain crust, increasing the depth of debris piles.
The problematic surface wet snow over drier, colder snow structure is easily identified by hand pits as this structure exists within the top 6 to 8 inches of the snowpack in the vast majority of areas on E-SE-S-SW aspects. In areas where this snowpack structure exists, avoid travel on slopes steeper than 35 degrees and stay out from under steeper terrain above.
