Avalanche Forecast

Moderate - Forecast snowfall amounts are uncertain on Tuesday

The high pressure ridge over the interior of the province should remain until late Sunday afternoon. Warm southerly winds will continue driving the freezing level to 2500 m late Saturday through Sunday, then begin to drop late on Sunday afternoon to around 1500 m.  No overnight temperature recovery expected.  Precipitation is forecast to begin late Sunday afternoon and continue  through Tuesday with 10 to 15 mm forecast, most likely falling as rain below 1500 m.  Wednesday should be dryer with the freezing level dropping to 1000 m overnight.

Reports of natural and human triggered avalanches have dropped off in the past few days. Earlier in the week a skier remotely triggered a cornice failure from a few meters away on a north/northeast facing slope around 2100 m in the Rossland range. When the falling chunks of cornice impacted the slope below it triggered a very large (size 3) avalanche that ran on the March 6th crust. Natural cornice failures have also been reported. A second skier triggered avalanche (size 2) was reported on a northeast facing feature near 2000 m. Numerous loose wet avalanches to size 1.5 have also been reported on solar aspects. ( facing southerly) .

The recent storm snow of 40 to 60 cm continues to settle above multiple crusts at treeline and below. In some valleys these storm slabs may be sitting on a thin crust that was buried on March 11th. A second crust, (the early March melt/freeze crust) can be found down 50 to 80 cm. The late February (Feb 27th) persistent weak layer of buried surface hoar down is now down 70 to 120 cm and has been the interface for some large avalanches. We suspect that this weak layer is more prominent on northerly (shaded) aspects at and above 1700 m. This surface hoar layer may also be associated with a crust on solar aspects. With the forecast of sun and strong solar radiation, triggering this deep weak layer may become easier. Pay attention to moist or wet surface snow as a sign that solar radiation is strong,  and the potential is there for deep weak layers to become reactive.