Avalanche Forecast

Moderate - The weather pattern is stable

We're into a stable and benign weather pattern with cooling temperatures and isolated flurries.THURSDAY: Cloudy with sunny breaks and isolated flurries / Light southerly winds / Freezing levels at valley bottom / Alpine high temperatures near -8 Celsius.FRIDAY: A mix of sun and cloud and isolated flurries / Light variable winds / Freezing levels at valley bottom / Alpine high temperatures near -8 Celsius.SATURDAY: Cloudy with light flurries in the afternoon (local accumulations 5-10cm possible) / Light southwest winds / Freezing levels at valley bottom / Alpine high temperatures near -9 Celsius.

On Saturday there was a machine-triggered Size 2 near Wells that resulted in a burial. See here for the Facebook post.On Friday there was a spooky remote-triggered Size 3 near Valemount. It was at ridge crest, upper treeline elevation on a southwest aspect. See here for this great MIN post.Since temperatures cooled down over the weekend, we've had limited reports of slab avalanches, even with cornice fall as a trigger.

We've had little change over past several days with 1-5cm new snow each day in most areas (and some spots receiving 15cm low density snow). Expect to find 15-35 cm of newer snow blown into wind slabs at higher elevations, most recently by some moderate southeast winds.The sun is starting to pack a punch and can trigger loose snow avalanches mid-day. The sun is also creating a thin crust on steep southerly aspects.At lower elevations there's moist snow or supportive crust below 1700m. Settling snow (40-60cm) from last week is still bonding slowly to the previous snow surface from early February, which is now down 50-80 cm.The persistent weakness buried mid-January is now down around 80-100 cm and the surface hoar/facet weakness buried mid-December is down 100-150 cm. These deep persistent weaknesses still have the potential to wake up and become reactive with human triggers. (See MIN post above).