Stevens Pass

The persistent barrage of atmospheric river events continues. A brief cooldown will bring snow and strong winds to the upper and mid elevations before a return to rain into the upper-elevation band. Prepare for potentially dangerous avalanche conditions if you find access to the upper elevations that are not currently closed due to washouts or downed trees. 

Monday brought another 2.25" of rain to Stevens Pass, with high temperatures just shy of 50°F. We will see a brief return to snow on Monday night as temperatures cool. It's difficult to determine just how much snow we'll see accumulate before the inevitable switch over to rain. But keep in mind that with more dry snow, you'll find larger and potentially more sensitive avalanche conditions. 

If you make it to those higher elevations on Tuesday, be prepared for widespread, sensitive avalanche conditions. Large wind slabs at upper elevations and wet avalanches where it rains on dry snow surfaces. Both wind slabs and wet avalanches may run on underlaying crusts and be easy to trigger. Shooting cracks and recent avalanches are red flag signs of instability. To reduce your risk, make careful observations and choose conservative, low-angle terrain.Despite increasing avalanche risk, avalanches remain secondary to other issues facing the Stevens Pass zone. Getting to continuous snow is difficult. Highway 2 to Stevens Pass is currently closed in both directions. Flooding, washouts, downed trees, and damage to major roads are more imminent concerns. In addition to limiting access, these factors have reduced the available information to produce this forecast. Major rain events since December 4th, culminating with 9.75" of water from December 9-11th, melted snow at middle and lower elevations. The last direct observation from upper elevations was on November 28th. On Saturday, an NWAC forecaster had good views of many upper-elevation peaks. Continuous snow was estimated to begin between 5500 and 6000ft. Wet avalanches likely occurred early during the 9th-11th, and some were large. It appeared that any avalanche debris piles were at least a couple of days old.With the warm start to the 25-26 winter season, we have less snowpack information than usual to start daily forecast operations. For zones and elevation bands with less snow than needed for avalanche hazard, we will issue a forecast with No Rating. Anticipated avalanche and weather conditions will still be updated daily. NWAC will issue an avalanche danger rating for a zone when enough snow to produce avalanches has accumulated at middle and upper elevations.