Avalanche Forecast

Good - The weather pattern is stable

Conditions will remain dry and mild through the forecast period with what we call diurnal fluctuations in the freezing level (the spring-like pattern where the temperature can drop by up to 10 degrees overnight only to rise again through the day). Thursday will see mainly cloudy skies with light westerly winds and a freezing level rising from 1000 to 1800m. Dry conditions will continue into Friday although an increasing North to North East flow may bring isolated flurries overnight, the freezing level will reach a high of 1500m. This pattern continues into Saturday with up to 5 cm of dust on crust expected.

No new avalanches have been reported recently

A thick, solid crust can be found on the surface on all but highest alpine slopes. The best riding can be found in the North of the region right now where a thin dusting covers old wind pressed snow in the alpine.  This snow may have been moved around by the winds forming isolated thin wind slabs in lee features. Below 2200 to 2400m the crust is effectively capping the snowpack and protecting the buried persistent week layers we've been worried about for the last couple of weeks. The mid-January surface hoar is around 60 to 80cm down. The mid-December crust is becoming harder to find but where it does exist (mainly at treeline elevations) it is over a meter down. Although these layers are protected I think that a large trigger (like a cornice collapse) in the right place could still trigger a very large avalanche.