Avalanche Forecast

3 - 139

More warm and moist weather is expected on Wednesday. This next system should move through the region quickly as it is deflected by the area of high pressure that is moving down from the North. The region should be under the influence of high pressure by Thursday, bringing broken skies and freezing levels dropping down to about the valley bottoms. A large warm and very wet system should be on the coast by Thursday afternoon or evening. Stay tuned to see how much moisture will make it into the interior.

Some larger avalanches up to size 3.0 have been reported from steep large features on North faces in the alpine that can be seen from the highway corridors. Some smaller avalanches, and a couple of size 2.0 avalanche have been reported from North through East aspects where the wind deposited snow in the lee of terrain features.

Surface snow has been wind affected in the alpine and open areas at treeline.  Some people are reporting a thin crust on solar exposed aspects that developed late last week, and is now buried by the new storm. The freezing level went up to about 1500 metres during the recent storm. Snow levels taper off to below threshold by about 1200 metres. There is about 60-80 cms of recent storm snow above an early November crust, or series of laminated crusts. Tests have been showing easy to moderate SP (sudden planar) pops on weak facetted crystals at this crust interface, or within the crust sandwich.