The overall avalanche danger in the backcountry is LOW. If you're looking for trouble, you may find isolated soft or hard slabs of wind blown snow that may crack and fail in older faceted snow in the high, northerly terrain. Otherwise, your main issues will be slide-for-life conditions on the slick crusts or general trouble with thin and threadbare conditions.
There is a widespread persistent weak layer (PWL) of faceted snow on northerly-facing slopes at mid- and upper elevations. In isolated areas, you may find isolated soft or hard slabs of wind blown snow that may crack and fail in older faceted snow in the high, northerly terrain.
The last reported avalanches were on December 7th with the last significant storm.
Skies are partly cloudy in the wake of yesterday's violent cold front. Mountain temps are in the teens to low 20s up high, the low 30s at the trailheads. Winds are from the west blowing 15-20mph. Storm totals from yesterday's brief event only added up to a trace to an inch along the Ogden skyline and 2-3" of heavy dense snow in the Monte Cristo and Powder Mountain zones (0.3-0.5" snow water equivalent). The rain-snow line was around 8000', give or take.
For today, we'll see increasing clouds and perhaps a flurry or two. Temperatures will slowly rise over the course of the day with the mercury again above freezing along the ridgelines tonight. The winds will lose some steam this morning before ramping up out of the west again tonight. These winds will again reach STRONG tonight into tomorrow with the arrival of another wet, windy, and warm storm through Saturday. We may see 3-6" of heavy dense snow and up to one inch of snow water equivalent. We'll see. The rain-snow lines are expected to be around 8000'.
Travel is pretty rough and rugged with only one to two feet of snow on the ground; most of this is made up of hard wind and temperature crusts with some damp to dry weak faceted snow near the ground on the polar aspects.
This information does not apply to developed ski areas or highways where avalanche control is normally done. This forecast is from the U.S.D.A. Forest Service, which is solely responsible for its content. This forecast describes general avalanche conditions and local variations always occur.
