Northwest Coastal

New snow and wind are forming fresh storm slabs over a variety of weak layers in the upper snowpack.

A couple of skier-triggered size 1 and 1.5 slab avalanches have been reported this week in the Terrace area. These avalanches occurred on north-facing terrain at treeline and above, failing on a facet/crust combination down roughly 20 to 30 cm from the surface.

New snow buries predominantly faceted and wind-affected surfaces, as well as surface hoar in wind-sheltered terrain.

A couple of crusts exist in the top 50 cm of the snowpack that have proven to be problematic sliding surfaces over the last couple of weeks.

Below, the mid and lower snowpack is generally well-bonded and strong.

A series of cold fronts moving north to south will bring convective snowfall with variable amounts and local enhancements for the weekend.

Friday night

Cloudy with 5 to 15 cm of snow. 30 to 40 km/h west ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -8 °C.

Saturday

Cloudy with 5 to 15 cm of snow. 30 to 50 km/h southwest ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -5 °C.

Sunday

Cloudy with 10 to 30 cm of snow. 20 to 40 km/h southwest ridgetop wind switching northwest. Treeline temperature -8 °C.

Monday

Sunny. 10-25 km/h northeast ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -15 °C.

More details can be found in the Mountain Weather Forecast.

• Use increased caution at all elevations. Storm snow is forming touchy slabs.
• As the storm slab problem gets trickier, the easy solution is to choose more conservative terrain.
• Potential for wide propagation exists, fresh slabs may rest on surface hoar, facets and/or crust.