Avalanche Forecast

The next strong cool cold front will cross the Northwest Saturday night and Sunday morning. This will renew moderate to heavy snow in the Olympics Saturday night and Sunday morning with a minor warming trend but the snow level will stay low. It looks like the heaviest snow will shift to Oregon Sunday.

Rapid loading will cause new storm and wind slab will build Saturday night and Sunday. Natural storm and wind slab should be possible and triggered storm and wind slab should be likely during the main part of the storm Sunday morning in the above treeline and near treeline. But these conditions could easily last all day Sunday.

Give large cornices a wide margin and watch for areas of recent wind slab deposits. Terrain anchors are still causing significant anchoring at the lowest elevations.

A major rain event was seen December 7-8th. This caused a crust and wet snow through the snowpack at Hurricane Ridge.

A series of cool storms since then has deposited storm snow at relatively low freezing levels. There has been about a foot of snowfall at Hurricane the past 2-3 days.

NWAC pro observer Matt Schonwald and a NPS ranger travelled extensively Friday around Hurricane Ridge testing the recent storm snow. At around 5500 feet the snow depth is about 4-5 feet with the December 9 crust buried about 1.5-2 feet from the recent storm snow. The snowpack in the Hurricane Ridge area was mostly unconsolidated low density surface snow with a gradually increasing density down to the well bonded crust, a very good profile. No slab character was noted in the upper snowpack during testing. Only isolated wind slabs were noted with no releases. Extensive cornices were noted on north to northeast sides of ridges. Skiing was very good.

The general break in the weather should bring some more stabilizing on Saturday.

In the higher elevations, above tree line, strong winds recently have scoured much of the snow from a wide variety of exposed slopes, leaving much exposed rock and vegetation.