Avalanche forecast

South Coast

Dec 18 – 19, 2015Avalanche Canada
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Avalanche danger

Sun
Mon
Alpine
3 · Considerable
Treeline
2 · Moderate
Below
2 · Moderate
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Highlights

Incremental loading above buried weak layers is trending the avalanche danger up over the weekend.

Avalanche problems

  • Storm Slabs

    • Alpine
    • Treeline
    • Below treeline
    Likelihood
    Likely
    Size
    1–3
    New soft slabs may be easy to trigger or release naturally. Storm slabs may increase in size as the slab consolidates and may be sitting on a sliding layer of buried surface hoar.

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.

Regions covered