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Avalanche Forecast

Archived

Dec 27th, 2016–Dec 28th, 2016

Alpine
Natural avalanches possible, human triggered probable.
Treeline
Natural avalanches unlikely, human triggered possible.
Below Treeline
Natural avalanches unlikely.
Alpine
Natural avalanches possible, human triggered probable.
Treeline
Natural avalanches unlikely, human triggered possible.
Below Treeline
Natural avalanches unlikely.
Alpine
Natural avalanches possible, human triggered probable.
Treeline
Natural avalanches unlikely, human triggered possible.
Below Treeline
Natural avalanches unlikely.

Regions

Little Yoho.

Some light snow and strong winds are keeping the sensitivity of the Dec.19th facet interface elevated. Reports of whumpfing, cracking and natural avalanches over the last 12 hours. Its a tricky time for assessing this problem. SH

Weather Forecast

Continued strong Westerly winds Wednesday and light snow. Thursday another pulse of snow (10-15cm) West of the divide. Alpine temperatures will stay in the -12 to -15C range and will cool off Friday as a NW flow begins to take over.

Snowpack Summary

Strong winds and light snow accumulations have formed thin wind slabs 10-20cm thick in alpine lees. These sit over previous slabs up to 60cm thick at treeline and above. These wind slabs sit over the poorly bonded Dec.19 facets. The Nov crust is 30-80cm deep. While it is not currently producing avalanches, we expect it could with more snow load.

Avalanche Summary

No observations from this area today.  Numerous size 1.5 - 2 avalanches observed on the East slopes between Bow Summit and Lake Louise. These slides appeared to be 24 hours old. As well, 2 naturals were observed off of the N. side of Mt. Fairview today. They were likely initiated by wind transport but the failure layer is unknown.

Confidence

Due to the number and quality of field observations on Tuesday

Problems

Persistent Slabs

Persistent Slab avalanches are the release of a cohesive layer of snow (a slab) in the middle to upper snowpack, when the bond to an underlying persistent weak layer breaks. Persistent layers include: surface hoar, depth hoar, near-surface facets, or faceted snow. Persistent weak layers can continue to produce avalanches for days, weeks or even months, making them especially dangerous and tricky. As additional snow and wind events build a thicker slab on top of the persistent weak layer, this avalanche problem may develop into a Deep Persistent Slab.