Avalanche Forecast

Good - -1

Tuesday: Light snowfall with moderate southwesterly winds and freezing levels near valley bottoms. Wednesday: A clearing trend with freezing levels as high as 1000m. Thursday: A temperature inversion with associated valley cloud is possible.

Reports are coming in about a widespread natural avalanche cycle that occurred Saturday night and Sunday morning with very large avalanches running full-path on all aspects and elevations. Storm slabs continued to be highly sensitive to human triggers on Sunday with slope-cut avalanches up to Size 2 on steep unsupported features and gullies at treeline and below.

Recent warm temperatures and upside-down storms created a touchy surface slab. Other weaknesses exist within and under the 150+cm of recent storm snow, but things seem so be settling rapidly. Moderate southerly or southwesterly winds have created wind slabs and large fragile cornices in exposed lee and cross-loaded terrain. All this new snow increases the load (stress) on deeper layers created during the mid-January cold snap; namely facets (sugar) and a crust at lower elevations (say 1500m and lower). This layer is now deeply buried (around 200 cm or more in many places) but snowpack test results on this layer range from no result to easy (variable strength) but the shear pops (if triggered it wants to propagate).