Avalanche Forecast
Regions: Olympics.
The Olympics are coming out of the biggest storm cycle of the year. As temperatures drop, shallow fresh wind slabs are rebuilding on a refreezing upper snowpack near treeline, while at the highest elevations above 6000 ft, you might encounter dry snow and the potential for a larger slab avalanche. Steer around wind-loaded features near ridgelines and avoid all slopes steeper than 35 degrees if the supportable crust thins or disappears.
Discussion
At Hurricane Ridge, a massive storm cycle since 12/31 brought 7.32†of water equivalent and added 46†to the total snow depth before the most recent snow changed to rain on Monday through late Tuesday with approximately 5†of snowpack settlement while temperatures hovered just above freezing at the NWAC station. We don’t know exactly how high the rain made it, but based on the Forks sounding, it probably reached 6000 ft. The change to rain likely triggered a widespread wet avalanche cycle within the approximately 3 ft of snow that fell Friday night through early Monday afternoon.
We expect light snow shower activity to leave an inch or two of snow at cooling temperatures Tuesday night. The fresh snow may get blown around to form shallow slabs; light snow flurries or partial sunshine won’t change the snowpack significantly on Wednesday.
We are most concerned about elevations above the 6000 ft snow line where large, dense storm slabs may linger beneath the lower-density storm snow. Additionally, maintain awareness that we’ve been through a massive storm cycle and wet snow layers may take additional time to heal and we don’t know how long they will take to refreeze near and below treeline. This could lead to ski supportable crusts or unsupportable crusts making for difficult travel conditions. Step back and assess what you see before delving into avalanche terrain on Wednesday and heed the Bottom Line travel advice.
Snowpack Discussion
New Regional Synopsis coming soon. We update the Regional Synopsis every Thursday at 6 pm.