Avalanche Forecast

Moderate - Wind speed and direction is uncertain

For most of the night temps will be around -13. In the early morning expect them to drop a few more degrees. Settling at -18 by 8am. UP to 4cm is expected from flurries. Winds...if it wasn't for wind, we'd no weather discussion at all. They should be from the SW tonight, but at midnight they're expected to pull a 180° shift and blow from the NE. If that weren't enough, by noon tomorrow they'll shift to the south. The good news is that they'll be diminishing as these shifts happen.

A big day for avalanches:-numerous loose dry "facalanches". Many seemed cornice triggered and carried surprisingly far; entraining deeper layers as they went. Healthy sz2's. They are more concentrated to the northern part of the region-A group reported a sz2 on the traverse towards the north side of Hero's Knob. Its unknown exactly what triggered it, but it did carry a skier away for a short distance. E aspect at about 2300m.-Numerous thin slabs around the bottoms of large alpine cliffs-Tent Ridge (surprised?) went sz 3 on its eastern aspect mid day today. A cornice triggered a loose dry which in turn triggered the deep persistent layer.

Interesting day today. To sum up the observations, its fair to say the snowpack is changing and the relatively solid snowpack is taking a turn for the worse. The winds picked up last night and instead of changing to a westerly flow, they held a northerly direction and lingered for the better part of today. This made for a rapid reverse loading pattern in the alpine. Lots of spindrift made reactive windslabs around cliffs. Treeline didn't escape the wind either. Slabs are there, but not as thick or dense as higher up. In an untracked, rocky, thin treeline area we had shooting cracks of up to 20m and large settlements. Remoting avalanches suddenly seemed like a real possibility. Open, below treeline areas also had large settlements on the Jan 17 surface hoar. The solar input is strong enough to soften the snow. The warming trend and wind loading is to blame for this rapid decrease in stability.