Avalanche Forecast
Regions: Kananaskis.
From the glass-half-full perspective...we will have one more day of fantastic snow shoeing conditions tomorrow! And even better yet, snow is expected to arrive tomorrow night which will give us a much needed boost in ski quality. Things are looking up!
Confidence
High -
Weather Forecast
Tomorrow could possibly be the last day of our snow drought. It will be very similar to today with warm temperatures and cloudy skies. But if the crystal ball known as SPOT Weather is right, winds will pick up by late afternoon and snow will start by 7pm. Tomorrow's high is -7, gusty wind up to 60km/hr from the SW and building cloud. Oh yeah, upper level winds will be 100km/hr plus. Don't kill the messenger...
Avalanche Summary
No new avalanches today.
Snowpack Summary
I looked in my thesaurus for another word for sastrugi...oddly enough there isn't one. Too bad, because there is a LOT of it out there. Sastrugi and gravel is the best way to describe the alpine right now. I did find another term for wind slab though; wind board. Treeline has widespread wind board with the odd bit of soft snow in denser trees or sheltered areas. On a potentially more serious note, we did see surface hoar today during our travels. It is in isolated places below treeline, and could be a problem if it gets buried tomorrow. It will likely be a below treeline/treeline problem only as the incoming wind will make short work of it in the alpine.
Terrain and Travel
- Watch for areas of hard wind slab on alpine features.
- Be careful with wind slabs, especially in steep, unsupported and/or convex terrain features.
Avalanche Problems
Wind Slabs
The buried wind slab will be hard to trigger but if you are able to get it to go from a thin area, it could produce a large avalanche. Thin wind slabs are also being found along ridgelines.
Aspects: All aspects.
Elevations: Alpine, Treeline.
Likelihood: Possible
Expected Size: 1 - 3