Avalanche Forecast

A series of storms is coming in quick succession over the next few days. Disagreement between weather forecast models is making it hard to pin down specifics, but you can expect snow, south to south-west winds and freezing levels rising to around 1700 m. Today's best guess for snow is around 2cm on Friday, 10-25 cm on Saturday and 15 cm on Sunday. I wouldn't bet my house on it. For more details check out http://www.avalanche.ca/weather.

No new avalanche activity has been reported, but I expect a natural avalanche cycle is already underway in areas with the heaviest new snow and/or wind effect. I would anticipate avalanche sizes to go up through the weekend.

Recent snow (around 30 cm at the time of writing) is building up over a variety of old surfaces including wind-stripped north aspects, hard wind slabs, facets, sun crusts and/or large-sized surface hoar. Of most immediate concern is a crust/surface hoar interface that is already super-reactive, with shooting cracks already observed. Reports suggest that the surface hoar exists up to about 2000 m and the crust maybe found on all aspects. I certainly wouldn't rule out the possibility of weak interfaces at higher elevations. Storm slabs are likely to develop all over the place with winds and temperature changes affecting the new snow.Deeper in the snowpack, surface hoar interfaces that were key players in November seem to be inactive. In the highest and shadiest spots, a crust/facet interface may be found near the ground, but is not generally considered a major concern at this time.