Avalanche Forecast

Moderate - Intensity of incoming weather systems is uncertain on Sunday

On Sunday night and Monday morning expect up to 15cm of new snow and moderate southwest winds. On Tuesday and Wednesday the region should see a mix of sun and cloud and generally light northwest winds. The freezing level should hover around 1400m for the forecast period.

Observations were extremely limited at the time of publishing this bulletin on Sunday, although evidence of a natural wind slab avalanche cycle to size 2.5 was observed in mostly northeast facing alpine terrain.

On Saturday night, 8-15cm of new snow fell. Strong southwest winds redistributed these accumulations into touchy wind slabs at treeline and in the alpine. 35-70 cm below the surface you'll find a persistent weak layer comprised of surface hoar, facets and/or a thick crust. This layer, which was buried on February 27th, seems variably reactive. In other words, it's still really touchy in some places while in other places it's really tough to trigger, and there's not much of a reliable pattern telling us what exact aspects are most suspect. I'd continue to be suspicious of steep, unsupported features at treeline and in the alpine as this layer has the potential for large avalanches. Deeper weak layers from mid-February and early January are now down 50-90cm and 70-120cm respectively. Triggering an avalanche on either of these layers has become unlikely but either still has the isolated potential to produce very large avalanches with a heavy trigger or significant warming.