Avalanche Forecast

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

A frontal system is expected to arrive Thursday night bringing moderate to locally heavy amounts of precipitation, strong southwest winds at higher elevations and freezing levels to about 1600m. Light flurries should persist through Friday, but will give way to a ridge that will bring clear skies to the region over the weekend. Freezing levels on Saturday are expected to be at around 2000m, climbing up to about 2800m on Sunday.

Over the past few days, loose snow avalanches to size 2 were reported from the region. Expect windslab activity at higher elevations and continued wet snow instabilities lower down with weather forecast for Thursday night.

Since last week, light to locally moderate amounts of new snow have formed soft slabs that overlie a crust or wet grains at treeline and above while rain has continued to penetrate and weaken the isothermal snowpack at lower elevations. The mid-February buried surface hoar layer is down about 140-220 cm. The likelihood of avalanches failing on this layer has been very low due to cooler temperatures, however it may wake up with warming and the consequence continues to be very large destructive avalanches. Cornices in the region are very large and have may become weak with spring temperatures.