Avalanche Forecast

Issued: Jan 29th, 2015 8:58AM

The alpine rating is moderate, the treeline rating is low, and the below treeline rating is low. Known problems include Persistent Slabs.

jfloyer, Avalanche Canada

South Coast.

Thin spots in steep high alpine terrain, especially in the north of the region are the places to watch right now.

Summary

Confidence

Good

Weather Forecast

Friday: Dry. Warm alpine temperatures with freezing level around 2500 m. Ridgetop winds around390 km/h from the west. Saturday: Dry. Cooling through the day. Winds becoming northerly or northwesterly, but staying mostly light. Sunday: Snowfall amounts 2-5 cm. Freezing level around 800 m. Moderate southwesterly winds.

Avalanche Summary

No recent avalanches reported.

Snowpack Summary

Up to 50 cm of settled storm snow has been saturated by rain up to about 2100m. Pretty much all snow surfaces now sport a hard frozen crust. At the highest elevations you might find dense, stubborn wind slabs in lee terrain. Very low down you might find some areas where only a thin crust overlies moist or wet snow.For now, at least, deeper snowpack weaknesses have been largely rendered inactive by the strong capping crust layer. If there is an area of concern, it would be in the north of the region near Goldbridge, where a deep persistent slab from 26-Jan was remote-triggered on surface hoar buried 70 cm below the surface. Steep convexities and thin-to-thick trigger areas in the high alpine may still have the potential to release a slab in this part of the region.

Problems

Persistent Slabs

A recent large avalanche shows that persistent weak layers, buried up to 70cm below the surface, should still be on our radar in high elevation terrain in the north of the region.

Dig down to find and test weak layers before committing to a line, especially in the north of the region.>Be aware of the potential for large, deep avalanches due to the presence of buried surface hoar.>

Aspects: All aspects.

Elevations: Alpine.

Likelihood

Unlikely - Possible

Expected Size

1 - 3

Valid until: Jan 30th, 2015 2:00PM