Avalanche forecast

Kananaskis

Feb 5 – 6, 2017Alberta Parks
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Archived · expired 10 years ago

Avalanche danger

Mon
Tue
Alpine
4 · High
Treeline
4 · High
Below
3 · Considerable
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Highlights

Avoid all avalanche terrain.

Avalanche problems

  • Persistent Slabs

    • Alpine
    • Treeline
    • Below treeline
    Likelihood
    Likely
    Size
    2–4
    Triggering of these slabs from a thin weak area may cause an avalanche that involves the entire snowpack. With the recent additional snow load, triggering of these deeper layers is now more likely.

  • Loose Dry

    • Alpine
    • Treeline
    • Below treeline
    Likelihood
    Very Likely - Certain
    Size
    1–2
    Large amounts of new snow is producing widespread sluffing.

  • Storm Slabs

    • Alpine
    • Treeline
    • Below treeline
    Likelihood
    Very Likely - Certain
    Size
    1–3
    With up to 80cm of snow in the past 48 hours, storm slabs are very touchy to human triggering. Forecasters experienced numerous remotely triggered avalanches on Sunday.

Confidence

Moderate -

Weather Forecast

Cold temperatures tonight and on Monday with temperatures near -22 °C with light East winds. A further 15cm is expected by the end of Monday. The sun may shows it's face again on Tuesday, but it won't warm up until later in the week.

Avalanche Summary

Numerous skier remote triggered avalanches up to size 1.0 on all aspects at Treeline and below. Trigger distances ranged from 3 to 40 metres. These avalanches were up to 30cm thick. and occurred on relatively low angle lightly treed slopes. Suspect numerous naturally triggered avalanches ranging from size 2.0 to 3.0 on all aspects. Visibility was very poor, and a few debris piles were directly observed today.

Snowpack Summary

Up to 50cm of new snow in the past 24hrs, with storm snow totals now as much as 80cm at Treeline now overlies the previously formed hard wind slab in most areas. At lower elevations the snowpack has doubled in just 2 days. Minimal wind effect at Treeline so far, but expect more in the Alpine (unconfirmed due to very poor visibility). Very touchy shears within the storm snow down 10 to 30cm, which were easily triggered remotely, from as far away as 40 metres, by the forecasting team today.

Regions covered