Conditions are starting to change! Fresh windslabs were building on Friday and with the forecasted storm this weekend we can expect avalanche danger to increase due to new snow and winds.
New winslabd are building into the Alpine and at treeline with the arrival of the front. These windslabs are in more specific places at treeline like gullies and unsupported features
This layer may reawaken with the new load anticipated over the next few days.
5cm of new snow is forecast overnight with strong winds and warming temperatures. Then later on Saturday the main body of the front starts to move in giving us 20-30cm of new snow with continues strong winds out of the SW. This will likely trigger an avalanche with the arrival of the main front so pay close attention to timing of the new snow.
No new avalanches were observed on Friday but conditions were obscured for the better part of the day.
Winds on Friday were increasing and as s result we were seeing more pronounced windslabs 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.
