Wet Slabs
- Alpine
- Treeline
- Below treeline
- Likelihood
- Likely
- Size
- 2–3
Sunday will be the 3rd day with above freezing temperatures and lingering light rain, which will continue to weaken the snowpack around Mt.Hood. Liquid water will percolate deeper into our snowpack, potentially flowing into older weak layers. Prior to this storm layers of buried surface hoar existed 1-2 ft below the snow surface . Human triggered wet slab avalanches remain likely. Wet slabs are notoriously hard to forecast and manage. So increase your safety margins and avoid traveling in areas where avalanches can start, run, and stop.
Wet slabs may not be the only problem you may encounter. Other wet snow avalanche problems, such as wet loose or glide avalanche problems are worth considering. Several days of warm temperatures and rain can do weird things to a snowpack, especially since we just had a dry snowpack with known weak layers just a few days ago.