Kananaskis

New snow, warm temps and strong SW winds will likely initiate an avalanche cycle on Sunday. A good day to make conservative terrain choices. 

One audible avalanche likely a cornice collapse off of Snow Peak. An additional sz 2 avalanche on the back side of Lawrence Grassi was observed on a flight to the Burstall Pass region. Visibility was limited for most of the day and as a result, not many new avalanches were observed.

Our weather stations are currently down due to a satellite issue.

Most weather models seem to agree that we should see about 20-25cm of snow beginning overnight and into the morning with strong SW winds. Temperatures will be around -5C and then begin cooling again as the storm leaves the region late in the day on Sunday. New snow, winds and warm temps are ideal conditions for avalanche formation. 

Pronounced windslab development in the region especially in the alpine and into treeline. Our Snowpack mainly consist of generations of windslabs overlying a relatively strong mid pack with the Basal November rain crust at the lower elevations. For december it has been a fairly stable snowpack with the windslabs in the upper snowpack as the primary concern but that is all likely to change with the incoming storm. As we did pre Christmas, we are expecting to see avalanches in the upper snowpack and the possibility of the basal facets and November crust becoming overloaded and failing triggering large avalanches. Forecasters were getting cracking in open areas around burstall pass. 

• Pay attention to the wind, once it starts to blow fresh sensitive wind slabs are likely to form.
• Avoid areas where the snow feels stiff and/or slabby.
• Avoid thin areas like rock outcroppings where you're most likely to trigger avalanches failing on deep weak layers.
• Fresh wind slabs will likely form throughout the day, diligently watch for changing conditions.