Avalanche Forecast

A weak short wave in a weak west flow is moving over the Northwest Thursday and Thursday night. This should cause increasing light showers east of the crest at higher elevations with lower snow levels. Another weak short wave in a northwest flow will move over the Northwest on Friday. This should maintain some light showers at higher elevations on Friday.

The light amounts of rain or snow Thursday to Friday should not significantly change snow conditions east of the crest.

As a result of the overall low snowpack, especially below treeline, watch for terrain hazards such as open creeks, partially covered rocks and vegetation.

A benign weather pattern with mild temperatures has been seen in the Olympics and Cascades for about the past 10 days.

There has been a lot of consolidation and melting and freezing of surface layers of the snow pack in all areas including east of the crest. There were some reports of small loose wet avalanches on steep solar slopes a few days ago. But there have been no reports of avalanches more recently mainly just some reports of spring-like corn skiing at times.

The North Cascade Mountain Guides reported only some surface softening on solar slopes on Tuesday.

NWAC pro-observer Tom Curtis was at Rock Mountain east of Stevens Pass Wednesday and found a 10 cm thick surface crust, no signs of instability or recent avalanches and used crampons on most of the upper mountain.

While the January 15th facet/crust layers can still be identified in parts of the NE Cascades, this persistent weak layer has been stabilizing and become unlikely to trigger. As a result the Persistent Slab problem has been removed from the NE Cascade forecast.