Avalanche Forecast

Friday Overnight: Warm, wet, intense storm ramping up. Freezing level rising to 2000m. Strong southwest wind. Precipitation of 15 to 30 mm water equivalency. Normally that means 20 to 60 cm of snow; with this storm it means soaking rain at lower elevations and up to 30 cm of snow at the highest elevations.

Saturday: Freezing levels lowering with temperatures falling back below freezing by end of day. 5 to 15 mm of water equivalent translates into, depending on your elevation: rain, a mix of rain & snow, or up to 15 cm of snow. Strong west winds.

Sunday: Mix of sun and cloud. Flurries for most of the region but up to 10 cm of snow in western upslope locations. Temperatures have cooled down to around -10 C in the mountains with moderate northwest winds

Monday: Dry. Mix of sun and cloud. Temperatures steady around -1- to -15 C. West to northwest wind at moderate strength.

WIndslabs continue to be reported throughout the region, with this MIN report (with great photo) being a good example of the type of problem we're dealing with. Recent ones were in the size 1 to 1.5 range.

Looking forward, a warm wet storm will create a Loose Wet avalanches at lower elevations and increase the likelihood of Storm Slabs (and Wind Slabs) at higher elevations.

Here's a snowpack description as of Friday Jan 31 before the forecast warm wet "atmospheric river" (previously know as a pineapple express) storm arrives. This description will obviously no longer apply once hit by soaking rain at lower elevations .... The upper snowpack is right-side-up meaning light dry & fluffy (aka powder) at the surface which gradually blends into increasingly harder and stronger snow with depth.The weeks-long weather pattern of snow & wind also means there are widespread storm and wind slabs.

In the mid-pack there's a layer of weaker surface hoar buried in late December that remains a concern but is gaining strength. This layer is found across much of the North Rockies region but our focus is around McBride and the McGregors/Torpy. It's a classic surface hoar layer that's most prominent in sheltered treeline features 50 to 150 cm below the surface.

• Watch for rapidly changing conditions during periods of heavy loading from new snow, wind, or rain.
• Avoid exposure to overhead avalanche terrain, large avalanches may reach the end of run out zones.
• Loose avalanches may start small but they can grow and push you into dangerous terrain.