Avalanche Forecast

Low - Due to the number of field observations

The storm cycles of December are just a memory now and it seems the atmosphere is falling into the classic El Nino arrangement. A small blip of a storm may bring a bit of precipitation to the South Coast Sunday night but we are not expecting any of that system to spill over into the South Rockies. The pattern looks pretty slack for the forecast period. SUNDAY: Freezing level at valley bottom, moderate southwest winds, no precipitation. MONDAY: Freezing level at valley bottom, light southwest winds, no precipitation. TUESDAY: Freezing level at valley bottom, moderate southwest winds, no precipitation. For more detailed mountain weather information visit avalanche.ca/weather.

On Friday control work produced loose dry avalanches to size 1 on E and NE aspects. On Wednesday control work produced a size 2 storm slab on a high elevation east facing feature. Previous to this, the last reported avalanche activity was on Sunday when a group of sledders triggered or remotely triggered a large slab avalanche about 2 km south of Castle Mountain that resulted in one rider deploying his airbag and being partially buried. More details here: http://bit.ly/1TqhuQf

Mild alpine temperatures should help the recent storm snow to settle and bond to the existing snowpack. The upper snowpack consists of around 40 cm of old settled storm snow that rests on 10 cm of cold facets. This interface has been producing moderate to hard shears in recent snowpack tests. In wind exposed terrain you're likely to find pencil hard wind slabs sitting on the facets, but out of the wind the old storm snow remains largely unconsolidated. Our field team was out traveling around the region last week and they found surprisingly little wind effected snow. It sounds like the story is a little different around Castle Mountain where upper elevation terrain has seen quite a bit of recent wind out of the west and now north.