Avalanche Forecast

High -

THURSDAY: Cloudy with isolated flurries bringing trace accumulations, light southwesterly winds, alpine temperature around -13.FRIDAY: Cloudy with sunny periods and isolated flurries bringing trace amounts of fresh snow, light southerly winds, alpine temperature around -15.SATURDAY: Cloudy with sunny periods and isolated flurries and trace amounts of fresh snow, light southeasterly winds, alpine temperature around -8.

Reports from Tuesday include a few natural and human-triggered wind slab avalanches and cornice falls up to Size 2, but generally no new avalanches. Expect wind slabs to remain sensitive to human triggers for the forecast period.

Surface hoar is growing and the upper snowpack is faceting. In exposed areas at all elevations, recent winds have resulted in scouring, hard wind slabs, and thicker reactive wind slabs in unusual places as the winds shifted from west to northeast. Continued moderate variable winds have been keeping wind slabs fresh and touchy in some areas and sun-exposure is likely making the wind slabs extra touchy on south-facing slopes. Facets and/or surface hoar buried mid-December has been giving hard and broken or no results in snowpack tests where it is down around a metre or more. However, recent snowpack tests in a shallower area gave moderate sudden planar results on this persistent weakness where it was found as surface hoar down 55 cm. This suggests that the primary concern for persistent slab avalanches is in shallow snowpack areas; however, the potential for step-down avalanches remains where it is deeper. The lower snowpack is well bonded and features a thick rain crust near the ground.