Persistent Slabs
- Alta montaña
- Límite del bosque
- Bajo el límite del bosque
- Probabilidad
- Likely
- Tamaño
- 2–3
Conditions are dangerous and touchy despite a break between storms. LOTS of red flags were observed yesterday including many recent avalanches, shooting cracks, and whumpfing. The recent avalanches were large and one looks to have failed at the ground on Colorado indicating there are several dangerous weak layers in this snowpack including weak snow at the ground in the upper elevations.
These are clear signs that the snowpack needs more time to adjust. We are within the 48 hour window when most avalanches occur after a storm. The chance of triggering an avalanche is going to go up as we climb in elevation because there is a thick crust on the surface down low that begins to thin around 2,000'. Stepping off the skin track or tip toeing on a test slope may be all we need to do to get a scary red flag like a whumpf or small avalanche. Check out this observation for a sense of how touchy conditions were yesterday on Fresno.
The reason conditions are so touchy after this storm is because the snowpack is upside down with 2 to 3' of wet heavy snow sitting on weak snow that developed during the period of calm weather (near surface facets and surface hoar). All of this is resting on a crust in the mid elevations. This is a bad set up and it is likely to stick around for a while.