Avalanche forecast

Kootenay Boundary

Feb 27 – 28, 2015Avalanche Canada
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Avalanche danger

Sun
Mon
Alpine
1 · Low
Treeline
1 · Low
Below
1 · Low
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Highlights

Looks like another dry and relatively cool weekend. Avalanche danger remains low and hopefully the light dusting of snow improves snow quality.

Avalanche problems

  • Persistent Slabs

    • Alpine
    • Treeline
    • Below treeline
    Likelihood
    Unlikely
    Size
    3–6
    While unlikely to be human triggered, be aware that there are still deeply buried weak layers in the snowpack. If triggered, the resulting avalanche would be large and deadly.

Confidence

Good - The weather pattern is stable

Weather Forecast

A ridge of high pressure rebuilds overnight and results in clearing skies and sunny weather for the weekend. The freezing level is near valley bottom on Saturday and up to around 1000 m on Sunday. Winds are light gusting to moderate from the NE-NW. A weak low pressure system could cross the province on Monday bringing light or moderate snowfall, but theres a good deal of uncertainty with this disturbance.

Avalanche Summary

No new avalanches have been reported in the past few days.

Snowpack Summary

A trace of new snow sits on the previous snow surfaces. The most prominent feature in the snowpack is the thick upper crust. This crust is supportive all the way to ridge crest and is effectively "capping" the snowpack, keeping riders from tickling any deeper weak layers. On solar aspects the proud crust is on the surface (softening during sunny days), and on shadier aspects there may be 5 - 20 cm of settled storm snow on it. There are still weak layers in the snowpack that we'll continue to monitor, but for now these layers are dormant. We would likely need significant warming and/or heavy loading to re-activate them.

Regions covered