Incoming snow and wind on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday will increase the hazard, especially at higher elevations. This will contribute to new avalanche problems and may be enough to trigger deeper instabilities and larger avalanches. Lower elevations have a refrozen snowpack and few concerns, though travel may be difficult.
Incoming snow with strong SW winds will add load to exsisting wind slabs in lee terrain in the alpine and at treeline on Tuseday. This problem will become more touchy as the storm continues.
A facet interface from late January is now buried 100–180 cm deep. We continue to see hard, sudden test results on this layer in some areas. This problem is becoming more stubborn, but will produce large avalanches if triggered.
No new avalanches observed today.
Further evidence of the widespread avalanche cycle that occurred over the past week, with many size 2-4 avalanches failing on storm or persistent weak layers at treeline and above, and wet loose avalanches at lower elevations.
5-40 cm of soft snow above 2000 m (depending on elevation and location) over the March 20 rain crust, with some new suncrusts on solar aspects. New wind slabs in lee alpine and treeline areas from strong SW winds the past two days. The Jan 24 facet layer is down 100-180 cm at treeline and in the alpine, with some tests still giving hard, sudden results. The Mar 20th crust is present below ~2300 m and gets thicker as you go lower, with only a dusting of new snow on it at valley bottom.
Tuesday
Cloudy. 10 to 15 cm of snow. 30-50 km/h southwest ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature steady near -6°C.
Wednesday
Mostly cloudy. An additional 10 to 20 cm of snow. 50 km/h southwest ridgetop wind, decreasing in the afternoon. Treeline temperature -5°C dropping in the afternoon.
Thursday
A ridge of high pressure is starting to build.
