Avalanche Forecast

Poor - Due to the number of field observations

The big story over the next few days is the increasing freezing level. Wednesday: No precipitation. Freezing level should stay near valley bottom throughout the daylight hours. Winds light and variable at all elevations. Thursday: No precipitation. The freezing level is forecast to rapidly rise to 2500m, topping out around 3000m in the afternoon. Moderate to strong SW winds at treeline, Strong W winds at upper elevations. Friday: No precipitation. Winds light and variable at all elevations. The freezing level should remain around 3000m all day.

Observations have been essentially non-existent in recent days. This likely speaks more to a lack of observers rather than actual conditions. I'm confident recent storm loading has produced large storm slab avalanches at higher elevations, while loose wet or wet slab avalanche activity occurred at lower elevations where rain fell.

Since February 5th, moderate to heavy precipitation fell throughout the region. The rain line during the storms generally hovered around 1700m, although there were periods where rain fell into the alpine. In the alpine, heavy accumulations of moist, dense snow have been pushed by strong southwest winds into much deeper deposits in upper elevation lee terrain. The recent storm snow overlies a hard crust layer (which may have overlying surface hoar) which was formed in late January. At lower elevations, continuous rain has saturated the snowpack. I suspect cornices are large and fragile.In the mid to lower snowpack, you may find the mid-December crust/facet/surface hoar combo. At lower elevations rain has likely destroyed what was left of this layer. At higher elevations recent storm loading may have produced very large avalanches at this interface, although observations have been extremely limited.