Although Avalanche Hazard will persist as long as snow remains, we will no longer be producing regular avalanche bulletins for the 2014/2015 season. To contact Waterton Lakes National Park Visitor Safety staff call 403 762 1473 during business hours.
Weather Forecast
Freezing levels are forecast to climb to 3200m Friday. Cooling over the weekend will be short-lived ahead of a return to warm temps next week. This puts us into spring weather patterns with warm, sunny days and cold nights. In weeks to come, watch for spring storms to bring a return to winter conditions especially at upper elevations.
Snowpack Summary
Powerful heating has now created moist surface snow to mountain top. With freezing crusts will form. Recent snow combined with west winds have created hard windslabs in alpine areas over recent crusts that run to at least 2400m on even the shaded slopes. While snow exists as low as 1500m, very little coverage can be found below 2000m.
Avalanche Summary
As freezing levels reached mountain tops today avalanche activity spiked with loose wet avalanches to size 2 out of many of the steeper slopes. While there was some dry slab activity earlier in the week with recent snow failing over buried crusts, loose wet activity today was triggering these same slabs with more of a wet slab character.
Problems
Loose Wet
Loose Wet avalanches are the release of wet unconsolidated snow or slush. These avalanches typically occur within layers of wet snow near the surface of the snowpack, but they may quickly gouge into lower snowpack layers. Like Loose Dry Avalanches, they start at a point and entrain snow as they move downhill, forming a fan-shaped avalanche. Other names for loose-wet avalanches include point-release avalanches or sluffs. Loose Wet avalanches can trigger slab avalanches that break into deeper snow layers.
Wet Slabs
Wet Slab avalanches are the release of a cohesive layer of snow (a slab) that is generally moist or wet when the flow of liquid water weakens the bond between the slab and the surface below (snow or ground). They often occur during prolonged warming events and/or rain-on-snow events. Wet Slabs can be very unpredictable and destructive.
Cornices
Cornice Fall is the release of an overhanging mass of snow that forms as the wind moves snow over a sharp terrain feature, such as a ridge, and deposits snow on the downwind (leeward) side. Cornices range in size from small wind drifts of soft snow to large overhangs of hard snow that are 30 feet (10 meters) or taller. They can break off the terrain suddenly and pull back onto the ridge top and catch people by surprise even on the flat ground above the slope. Even small cornices can have enough mass to be destructive and deadly. Cornice Fall can entrain loose surface snow or trigger slab avalanches.