Avalanche Forecast

Good

Unsettled weather is bringing few flurries and cloudy skies overnight into Thursday morning. An building upper ridge will host a clearing drying trend, with cooler temperatures. Thursday: Cloudy with sunny breaks in the afternoon. Light West winds are expected and alpine temperatures near -10. Freezing levels should remain at Valley Bottom through the forecast period.Friday/Saturday: Cloudy with few flurries. Ridgetop winds will be light-moderate from the West, and alpine temperatures near -13.

No new observations.

The recent storm snow seems to be settling with moderate to hard resistant shears in the top meter of the snowpack. Wind slabs have formed and may be easy to trigger and more reactive, especially on leeward slopes, and behind terrain features (spines, gullies). In sheltered places the slab is still relatively unconsolidated and soft and may not propagate far. In some areas through the region, people continue to monitor the late November buried surface hoar found down around 130 cm. Snowpack testing has shown compression and deep tap test results in the hard to very hard range with a variety of fracture characteristics, including no results, breaks and some with sudden results. This layer may be difficult to trigger, but you can expect a consequential avalanche to occur if this layer fails. Dig down, find and test weak layers that may exist in your neck of the woods. Deeper in the snowpack sits a generally well settled mid-pack.