A heavy load of new snow is primed for human-triggering. More snow and wind intensifying through Monday will increase an already elevated avalanche hazard.
Ongoing wind and snowfall continue to form reactive slabs. Reactivity is expected to increase with another pulse of wind and precipitation intensifying through Monday.
On Saturday and through Sunday, storm snow was reactive to human triggers, with reports of storm slab avalanches to size 2. This MIN captures the snowpack well.
New snowfall amounts over the weekend exceeded 100 cm in areas. This new snow covers a variety of mostly cold and hard surfaces and in protected areas surface hoar. Strong southwest winds have and continue to strip snow from ridgelines and exposed features and deposit new snow into deep pockets in lee aspect terrain.
Below this, over 100 cm of older, settled snow covers a widespread crust. Below this crust, 40-70 cm of previous storm snow in some areas sits on a strengthening layer of pellet-like graupel over an earlier crust.
The lower snowpack is well consolidated.
Sunday night
Wet flurries and snow above 1000 m, 10-20 mm precipitation. Southwest ridgetop wind 30-50 km/h. Treeline temperature -1 °C with freezing level dropping below 900 m.
Monday
Flurries, 10 cm snow through the day and another storm intensifying into Monday night. Southeast ridgetop wind 30-60 km/hr and gusting upwards of 90 km/h. Treeline temperature -2 °C with freezing level around 1000 m.
Tuesday
Wet flurries and snow, 20-50 mm precipitation overnight Monday into Tuesday morning. 40-60 km/h southwest ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -2 °C with freezing level around 1000 m.
Wednesday
Cloudy with isolated flurries, up to 5 cm. Southwest ridgetop wind 20-30 km/h gusting into strong. Treeline temperature -1 °C with freezing level rising to 1200 m.
More details can be found in the Mountain Weather Forecast.
