Weisseck, Muhr Valley

Beware of prone to triggering snowdrift accumulations

Beware of prone to triggering snowdrift accumulations

The avalanche danger is moderate above 2200 m and low below. Above around 2200 m, snow slabs can be triggered in some places by slight additional load in the wind slab and occasionally become medium sized. 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, snowpack is highly variable and below average. Fresh and older, brittle wind slab snow lies on a crusted can form surface. In some places, the wind slab is covered by a few centimetres of very soft new fallen snow. Weak layers are most likely to be found in the wind slab and at the transition to the melt-freeze crust. Below this are layers of faceted crystals and melt-freeze crusts. Due to the heavily built-up transformed snow cover, the fracture propagation potential is generally low. In isolated places, however, a prone-to-triggering combination of weak layer and snow slab cannot be ruled out, especially on the shady slope.

The coming night will be clear with little wind. On Monday, extensive cloud fields will move across the sky, often shielding the sun. However, the mountains will remain clear. The wind will blow mostly weakly from a predominantly north-westerly direction. It will remain very cold, with temperatures of -13 to -10 degrees Celsius at 2000 metres and around -15 degrees Celsius at 3000 metres.

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