Incremental loading above buried weak layers is trending the avalanche danger up over the weekend.
Confidence
Moderate - Timing, track, or intensity of incoming weather system is uncertain on Sunday
Weather Forecast
Snow on Friday should become flurries overnight resulting in a couple of more cm by Saturday morning combined with moderate westerly winds. Flurries during the day Saturday becoming snow overnight with strong westerly winds. Expect another 10-15 cm by Sunday morning, and snow continuing during the day with moderate southwest winds. Flurries or light snow and moderate southwest winds for Monday. Freezing level at or below 500 metres for the entire forecast period.
Avalanche Summary
No new avalanches reported. Suspect widespread thin soft slabs were easy to trigger today due tot the dry snow and moderate winds.
Snowpack Summary
There was 15-20 cm of new snow on Friday morning available to be transported into windslabs by moderate southerly winds. These new storm and wind slabs may be sitting on a new layer of surface hoar that was buried on Thursday. The new storm snow is above 40-50 cm of snow from last week, that may also be sitting on a buried surface hoar layer. There is about 100 cm of settled snow above the December 8th melt-freeze crust. There is about 200 cm at 1800 metres in the Coquihalla.
Problems
Storm Slabs
Storm Slab avalanches are the release of a cohesive layer (a slab) of new snow that breaks within new snow or on the old snow surface. Storm-slabs typically last between a few hours and few days (following snowfall). Storm-slabs that form over a persistent weak layer (surface hoar, depth hoar, or near-surface facets) may be termed Persistent Slabs or may develop into Persistent Slabs.