Northwest Inland

Avalanche danger will increase due to the forecast new storm moving into the region.

Moderate - Timing, track, or intensity of incoming weather system is uncertain

Strong southwest winds and a couple of cm of new snow overnight with freezing close to valley bottoms. Friday: Extreme southwest winds combined with 5-15 cm of new snow and freezing levels rising rapidly late in the day to 1200 metres. Another 10-15 cm by Saturday morning combined with extreme southwest winds. Freezing levels climbing during the day as the winds continue and another 5-10 cm of new snow falls. Sunday: 5-8 cm of new snow combined with moderate southwest winds and dropping freezing levels.

No new avalanches reported. A few large avalanches up to size 3.0 were remotely triggered in the Kispiox area on Monday on south thru west aspects at 1700-1800 metres. These avalanches were about 80 cm deep and are suspected to have released on the December 25th surface hoar. New storm slabs are expected to develop during the day on Friday.

5-20 cm of settled storm snow sits above a widespread rain crust up to about 1300 m. Recent winds have likely formed wind slabs on lee and cross loaded features. Several buried surface hoar layers have been reported 25-50 cm deep and have given moderate to hard results in snowpack tests. Many areas have hard slabs in the upper snowpack above weak sugary snow near the ground. Triggering a deep persistent slab above this sugary snow will remain a low probability high consequence scenario for some time. Snow profile information from Tuesday at Hankin reports 110cm at treeline with a buried surface hoar layer down 25cm and weak facetted snow down 75 cm as well as depth hoar above the ground. You can see the full report on the MIN.