Banff Yoho Kootenay

It's going to be all freeze and no melt with light snow and cold temperatures over the next few days. Watch locally in the high alpine for wind slabs formed by north winds in isolated, but possibly atypical places.

No new avalanches were observed or reported on Thursday, including by our field team on the Wapta Icefield; however, they reported generally poor visibility.

10 cm of dry snow fell on Wed night and sits over melt-freeze crusts in most locations, except north-facing slopes above 2600 m. The potential exists for some isolated windslabs in strange places from the north winds (reverse loading). On solar aspects, a crust extends to the ridgetop with 5-10 cm of drifted snow on top. The cooling trend will produce a widespread surface crust that will lock in the snowpack everywhere except on high north-facing terrain.

After the passage of a cold front, a cool airmass is now over our area, and this will hold for several days until a warmup begins early next week. For Friday and Saturday, expect isolated snowfall amounts coming in and out with accumulations of just a few centimetres. Locally deeper amounts are possible due to spring convection. Treeline temperatures will remain cool (-5 to -10), and the wind will be out of the north.