Avalanche Forecast

Another warm front will move over the Northwest on Saturday night and Sunday morning. This should cause increasing crest level winds, increasing rain or snow and further rising snow levels. However this system should cause less precipitation in the south such as at Mt Hood compared to the last system.

The rising temperatures and increasing snow densities in the high alpine should help build some new areas of wind slab or storm slab of up to several inches in the high alpine on Saturday night and Sunday morning.

Rain near treeline and below treeline will also load and weaken recent snow in those areas and cause wet snow avalanche conditions. This should be most dangerous in areas that had greater amounts of new snow on Saturday morning.

Expect to find a wide variety of snow conditions depending on elevation on Sunday. Make new snow pack evaluations as you change elevation if you are in the back country on Sunday.

A break between systems should be seen Sunday afternoon with light rain or snow showers mainly near and west of the crest. This should allow slab layers in the high alpine and wet snow near and below treeline to partly stabilize.

A cold front should approach from over the Northwest coastal waters on Sunday night. This should cause increasing crest level winds, increasing snow and lowering snow levels Sunday night through Monday morning. This should cause an increasing avalanche danger Sunday night and Monday.

Warm wet weather last weekend created another crust layer in most areas. This seems to have capped and stabilized the older hoar frost and faceted snow under that crust and made those layers generally unreactive.

Cold weather, light amounts of low density snow and some surface hoar formation were generally seen mid-week.

This set the stage for a warm front storm that moved across the Northwest on Friday. This generally caused strong southwest winds, increasing moderate to heavy snow and greatly warming temperatures. The snow began at cooler temperatures and became wet and heavy as temperatures warmed through the day. Sites near and west of the crest ended up mostly with about 4-12 inches of very wet heavy snow with the most at the top of Alpental and at Paradise. This created unstable upside conditions with the higher density wet snow at the surface and likely avalanche conditions especially at higher elevations.

Reports are sparse for yesterday and today likely due in part to the poor ski conditions. The Mt Baker ski patrol reported sensitive ski triggered wind slabs up to about a foot by Friday mid-morning with these conditions increasing by midday. Some stabilizing had occurred by today when they reported only small areas of wind slab up to 14 inches. The Crystal Mountain ski patrol today reports to little new snow for slab formation. The Mt Hood Meadows ski patrol today reports a stable freezing rain crust in the near tree line and alpine but it is unknown if this condition extends very far around the mountain. Little new back country information is currently available.

Shallow snow cover continues to limit the avalanche danger at lower elevations in most areas.