The heavy rain over the next few days will make the snowpack unstable. Conservative terrain use and avoiding overhead hazard is critical.
Confidence
Moderate - Due to the number of field observations
Weather Forecast
Warm and wet on Wednesday - Thursday. Cooling with light precipitation on Friday. WEDNESDAY: Rain (50-70mm) / Strong southerly winds becoming moderate / Freezing level around 2000m / High temperatures to +4 Celsius. THURSDAY: Rain (30-50mm) / Moderate southeasterly winds / Freezing level around 1900 m. FRIDAY: Mostly cloudy with isolated flurries (local accumulations 10-15cm) / High temperatures to +1 Celsius / Light-moderate southerly winds / Freezing level around 1200 m.
Avalanche Summary
Small loose wet avalanches to Size 1.5 were observed on steep solar (south) aspects on Monday.
Snowpack Summary
The snow from late last week (15-25cm) has consolidated well at treeline and below. This makes 50-70 cm of cumulative storm snow which so far has been bonding well to a knife hard crust buried Feb 3rd. That said, recent snowpack tests near the Cypress ski area gave sudden planar, propagation-likely results down 70cm on the Feb 3rd widespread crust layer. This may become a sliding layer on Wednesday with the heavy rain.In the alpine, where the precipitation fell as snow, the storm slabs have taken longer to settle out and still are a concern: Dig down to test the bond of the more recent snow layers. The mid and lower snowpack are settled and well bonded with the average snowpack depth at treeline 250-300 cm.
Problems
Wet Slabs
Wet Slab avalanches are the release of a cohesive layer of snow (a slab) that is generally moist or wet when the flow of liquid water weakens the bond between the slab and the surface below (snow or ground). They often occur during prolonged warming events and/or rain-on-snow events. Wet Slabs can be very unpredictable and destructive.