Avalanche Forecast

High -

FRIDAY: Mainly cloudy with isolated flurries possible, light southeasterly wind and freezing level around 1200m.SATURDAY: Mainly cloudy with flurries in the afternoon bringing up to 5 cm, light southeasterly wind and freezing level around 1200m.SUNDAY: Mainly cloudy with flurries bringing another 5-10 cm, moderate southeasterly wind and freezing level around 1200m. More details can be found on the Mountain Weather Forecast.

Reports from Wednesday include continued widespread natural slab avalanches up to Size 3 with crowns up to 80 cm thick. Reports from avalanche control on Thursday include widespread very touchy 40-50cm thick storm slab avalanches up to Size 2 running on a weakness within the recent storm snow, with remote triggers and widespread propagation. There were also a number of 1+m thick slab avalanches up to Size 2.5 running on the rain crust from Monday.

Rapid snow and wind loading continues with fluctuating freezing levels creating storm snow weaknesses. By Thursday morning another 25 cm of new snow brought storm snow totals to 50-100cm, which has been redistributed by southerly winds. On Monday into Tuesday we had rain up to 2200m near Whistler, while in other zones like the upper Callaghan it was 35 cm or more of fresh snow. The rain (or snow high in the alpine) started to saturate and load a wide variety of previous surface conditions. Simply put, the upper snowpack is extremely variable with weaknesses within and under the recent storm snow.