Avalanche Forecast

Further cooling overnight Saturday and Sunday with a weak system, causing a period of light snowfall along with light to moderate winds, should not change the danger significantly. The main concern are areas of shallow wind slabs on lee slopes near ridges. Any previously wet or moist surface snow should have formed a strengthening crust by Sunday, locally decreasing danger.

New, wind slab on lee easterly slopes near and above treeline, but should be isolated to specific terrain features. 

A continuous period of active weather for about the past week has brought several feet of snow to NWAC stations at Mt Hood. Fluctuating snow levels over this period has occasionally mixed rain up into the near treeline elevation band earlier in this storm cycle.

Roughly 2 feet of new snow accumulated Tuesday and Tuesday night at Timberline and Meadows NWAC base stations with consistent westerly transport winds buffeting the near and above treeline that continued through Wednesday afternoon.  

Meadows pro-patrol reported an active day of avalanche control on Wednesday with all the new snow. Storm and wind slab releases, mostly initiated with explosives, but also sensitive to ski cutting, ranged from 1 to 3 feet, with the larger slabs on lee aspects near and above treeline. Wind affects were seen well into the below treeline band, and also allowed hard slabs to form on lee slopes higher in the terrain. Debris from a natural avalanche was observed in White River Canyon at around 8000'.

Periods of light precipitation and high freezing levels were seen on Thursday and early Friday along with moderate and consistent SW winds near and above treeline.  

Reports from Thursday and Friday indicated the snowpack has stabilized significantly over the past two days following the warm temperatures and the addition of light rain.  Shallow moist to wet surface snow is well bonded to settling and supportive over storm snow. Little to no avalanche activity occurred Friday as reported by Meadows patrol with shallow wet snow that did not wish to move below treeline and stabilizing the storm snow at higher elevations also reluctant to move. There is a wide variety of surface snow conditions from wind buff, shallow crusts or wet surface snow, among potential other surface conditions. 

A weak storm Saturday has deposited an additional 2-4 inches of snow. Strong winds above treeline have likely built new wind slab layers on lee mostly NE-SE facing slopes below ridges.