Salt River and Wyoming Ranges

Wind slabs that formed with Monday's snowfall, and the strong winds that followed, remain a problem. You’re most likely to encounter a slab that you could trigger in upper-elevation terrain, particularly where they are resting on hard, icy surfaces.  Sunshine and warmer temperatures mid-day may impact snow surfaces, potentially leading to small wet snow avalanches on sunlit slopes or easier-to-trigger wind slabs. 

If you are reading this forecast in an email, be sure to click the Full Forecast button to see the entire forecast. You'll find the Full Forecast link just below and to the right of the Bottom Line section.

You may notice the absence of the Persistent Slab problem in the forecast this morning. Though weak layers of snow still exist in our snowpack, triggering a persistent slab or deep slab avalanche has become very unlikely. The last avalanche on the  weak layer of facets buried on January 26th occurred on January 30th on the Southeast face of Mount Taylor in the southern Tetons. That layer may become active again with a large additional load of SWE or prolonged warm temperatures but for now slabs above it appear to be non-existant or generally unreactive to human triggering.  Surface hoar buried in late January was the culprit more recently in human triggered avalanches on Feb 2 and 9. This layer continues to be found in test pits but only in very isolated, wind sheltered locations in the northern Wyoming Range. It also appears to be dormant.  

Keep these layers in the back of your mind as you travel in the mountains and as you watch the forecast for incoming storms. While these layers have become resistant to human triggering, a large load of new snow may change that.

So far this season, we have received 478 observations which includes 207 avalanche observations. A big thank-you to everyone who has submitted observations this year!