Avalanche Forecast

Moderate - Wind speed and direction is uncertain

Tonight: Overcast with a chance of 3-5 cm of new snow combined with light northwest winds and freezing to valley bottoms. Thursday: Broken skies with light variable winds and -15 in the alpine. Friday: Mix of sun and cloud with light variable winds and -18 in the alpine. Saturday: Mostly sunny with moderate northwest winds and alpine temperatures close to -20.

The deep persistent slab problem is a low probability/high consequence scenario that warrants extra caution around large open slopes, especially in shallow snowpack areas. There was a report on Tuesday of a size 3.5 avalanche at Mt Hosmer in the Lizard/Flathead region that released on or stepped down to the deep weak layer near the ground. On Wednesday we had a report from the Lizard range of another size 3.0 deep persistent avalanche on a northeast aspect in the alpine. Avalanche activity on Wednesday near Elkford was limited to loose snow up to size 1.5.

Near Elkford on Wednesday there was 20 cm of storm snow above a melt/freeze crust that developed from the rain last weekend. The height of snow was 170 cm and there was about 100-120 cm of settled snow above the weak layer of sugary facets that developed during the cold spell in December. Snow profile tests resulted in a hard shear in this location where the facets were sitting on a hard wind crust. Recent slope testing did not show any results. Some loose snow had released naturally from steep unsupported terrain.