Avalanche Forecast

Fair - Timing or intensity of solar radiation is uncertain

Wednesday: Moist NW flow continues to bring unsettled conditions to the region. Snow amounts up to 10 cm. Ridgetop winds moderate from the NW.  Alpine temperatures near -3.0 and freezing levels around 1200 m. Thursday: Mainly cloudy with possible sunny periods in the afternoon. Snow amounts near 5 cm accompanied by moderate ridgetop winds from the West. Alpine temperatures near -3.0 and freezing levels rise to 1300 m.Friday: Cloudy with dryer conditions. Some flurries with ridgetop winds light from the SW. Alpine temperatures -4.0 and freezing levels around 1000 m.

Natural sluffing from steeper terrain features. Reports of rider triggered soft slabs up to size 1.0 from NW-SE aspects above 1500 m.

Over the past week around 30 cm of new snow fell, and sits on a variety of old surfaces including hard wind slabs, crusts and large surface hoar crystals. Recent winds have drifted snow into wind slabs up to 40 cm thick on lee slopes which have been gaining strength. New soft slabs have developed with recent incremental snowfall and has buried surface hoar that exists approx. 20 cm down. At this point this surface hoar has been reported in the Northern part of the region, and I'm not sure how widespread it is. It's important to dig down in your neck of the woods and see if you can detect buried weak layers that may promote an avalanche problem. The early January surface hoar layer is buried down 40-80 cm and seems to be gaining strength. Reports indicate that this layer is mainly unreactive, and would require a large trigger to set it off. Below this sits a generally well settled mid pack, which may be bridging a basal facet/crust layer in deeper snowpack areas. The average snowpack depth at treeline is near 170 cm.