East Slopes South

Increasing clouds and wind may prevent even southerly slopes from softening on Sunday. With minimal avalanche concerns, your primary hazard could be challenging travel on slick, icy surfaces. Exposed creeks and low coverage may also add complexities to your travel plans.

If you enjoyed the sunshine on Saturday, Sunday may be disappointing with mostly cloudy skies and increasing winds. Travel hazards may be the most prominent danger out in the mountains. These could include challenging travel on slick, frozen surfaces and terrain hazards like open creeks and glide cracks. Bring appropriate traction equipment if you're venturing into the mountains on Sunday. 

The second day of below-freezing temperatures has allowed surface crusts to thicken further and the remaining water to drain out of last week's wet, soggy snowpack. We are still assessing all the impacts of the storm and the natural avalanche cycle. But we expect a significantly stronger snowpack exists throughout the zone now that temperatures have cooled. On Friday, in nearby East Central, I found widespread surface hoar and an inch of new snow above 5700ft. If these weak surfaces exist in East Soth as we expect, they could become buried and preserved with a few inches of snow in the forecast for Sunday Night. 

The snowpack has endured a beating over the past week with several inches of rain and warm temperatures. Reports of new large and very large avalanches from Ahtanum Meadows, Crystal Mountain, and East Central flowed in almost daily from January 21st through February 1st, when temperatures finally dropped below freezing. We are still looking for old crowns and avalanche debris to understand the full extent of this warm, wet storm and prolonged avalanche cycle. If you find evidence of an avalanche that we haven't logged in our avalanche observations, take a photo and let us know by submitting a public observation! Even if you don't see any avalanches, we'd love to hear about what you did find out in the mountains, and it helps shape a more accurate avalanche forecast.