Selkirk Mountains

Above freezing temperatures and wetting rains will help the snow surface soften and become unconsolidated, and you might provoke a wet snow sluff in steeper terrain below ridges, near cliff bands and in gullies. Pay attention to surface softening and stick to lower-angled slopes if you sink around 6 inches into wet snow, or see rollerballs. Cooler temperatures Monday night will shift precipitation back to snow and future avalanche concerns will migrate back to dry snow and wind-drifting hazards.

Only very isolated places below 5,500 feet hold enough snow cover for over-the-snow travel and therefore pose no avalanche danger at present.

Rain rain go away come again another day…or month…or season. Well, it's unfortunately here again today but should have less of a stranglehold on our extended weather and avalanche conditions. Rain wetting the snowpack is always a chess match of whether it’ll raise the danger or cause a new flavor of avalanche problem(s) to emerge. This time, we don’t envision the same snowpack reaction from the rain and to be honest, the snowpack is tired and worked over - if still present. That is why we decided to transition from a Wet Slab to Loose Wet avalanche problem in our products.

The threat for a wet slab to fail still exists, but you’re more likely to initiate a loose wet sluff from today’s rain softening and wetting the surface. If a wet slide gets going, it’s likely to gouge deeper and take additional volume downhill with it. Once we return to a cooler weather period, the snowpack will likely lock-up and current wet snow hazards should phase out. When the cool-down arrives, we’ll have to shift our thinking back to dry snow avalanche problems.

Downpour rains from two separate Atmospheric River (AR) events last week decimated the snowpack at lower elevations, unleashed a tongue of water toward dry, faceted snow layers at mid and upper elevations, and provoked a natural cycle of large to very large avalanches across the majority of our forecast zones. While this puts a damper on things now, no pun intended, we may walk away from this better off than we might think. Don’t let the presence of a surface crust fool you into thinking the snowpack has fully refrozen. Water pooling in the snowpack helps the snowpack retain heat and prevents cooler air temperatures from penetrating deeper in the snowpack and “locking things up”.

To avoid an unexpected encounter with a wet snow avalanche, you can implement a few travel and terrain management factors to help reduce your avalanche risk: 1) Avoid steep slopes where you sink around 6 inches deep into wet, unconsolidated snow. 2) Don’t travel through or linger in terrain traps without visibility of steeper terrain above you. 3) Give an extra wide buffer traveling on or below slopes with Glide cracks, or avoid those areas altogether.

Glide cracks and avalanches aren’t something we typically have on our radar near the winter solstice, but full snowpack cracks have started to emerge across our forecast area. More may appear as above normal temperatures continue and rain returns Monday and Tuesday. Glide cracks can give way to destructive avalanches at any moment and without warning - by far the least understood and most unpredictable avalanche hazard in the mountains.