Avalanche Forecast

Fair - Wind effect is extremely variable

Arctic air is dominant and the weather remains benign with cold and mostly clear skies through Wednesday. High level moisture is developing on Thursday bringing some cloud cover. Alpine temperatures will be steady near -15 accompanied by moderate NW winds. On Friday things begin to change, however; at this point confidence is poor with model solutions and precipitation amounts.

We continue to get reports of skier-triggered, and remotely triggered slab avalanches up to size 2.5. These avalanches are failing on all aspects from 1900-2300 m on a buried surface hoar layer 30-70 cm below the surface. This layer remains touchy to light loads, like YOU.

Up to 35 cm of light, low density snow overlies recently formed surface hoar. Strong northerly winds have transported the new snow onto southerly aspects creating stiff and reactive wind slabs. Up to 80 cm below the surface, a touchy weak layer of surface hoar sitting on a thick rain crust exists. This widespread weak persistent layer consisting of surface hoar/ facets and a hard rain crust was buried mid-December and continues to produce whumpfing and sudden planar characteristics in snowpack tests. It will likely remain sensitive to human triggering for the foreseeable future. Although high elevation slopes may not have the rain crust, they are still reported to have touchy buried surface hoar. At the base of the snowpack, a crust/facet combo appears to have gone dormant for the time being.