Avalanche Forecast

Fair - Timing, track, or intensity of incoming weather system is uncertain

Very strong Southwest winds and moderate to heavy precipitation is expected overnight and ending Saturday morning as the second of three pulses of moisture moves into the region. The North and East of the region may remain cooler due to the influence of the arctic air to the North. Freezing levels should be between 500 metres in the far north and 1800 metres in the Southwest. Cloudy with strong Southerly winds during the day on Saturday with light precipitation, and then moderate to heavy precipitation starting in the late afternoon or evening. Winds dropping to moderate on Sunday combined with light precipitation and freezing levels slowly dropping. A weak Low pressure system is expected to bring light to moderate snowfall on Monday combined with light Easterly winds.

No new avalanches were reported on Thursday due to limited observations during the storm. There were a couple of size 1.0 storm slab avalanches on Wednesday that were triggered by skiers. The storm slab was reported to have settled into a more cohesive slab with the warming temperatures. Expect natural avalanche activity and avalanche size to increase with storm loading.

The storm slab continues to develop and is up to 70 cm thick and sits on a variety of old surfaces including crusts, surface hoar, and old wind slabs. A crust can be found below about 1900m in the north of the region and below 2200m in the south of the region. At higher elevations the new snow has formed thick windslabs formed by strong Southwest winds. Several persistent weak layers can be found deeper in the snowpack that may be capped by the overlying crust at lower elevations. The mid-January surface hoar is buried between 60 and 100cm down and remains a concern at treeline and above. The mid-December surface hoar layer is now 100 to 140cm below the surface and appears to be slowly gaining strength.