Hazard rating for Douglas is Moderate today for the uppermost elevations. Winds out of the ESE picked up over night with gusts reaching 46 mph which creates the potential for fresh wind slab near ridgetops on N facing aspects. Watch out for hollow sounding snow, shooting cracks, or fat looking pockets that indicate wind slab that could be reactive to triggering. As the day warms up wet loose activity could also become a factor with point releases entraining more snow as they fan out.
With temps staying below freezing overnight wet loose may not be a problem till later in the day when things warm up a bit. As the day warms look for point releases from tree or rock plops that have the ability to entrain more snow as they move downhill.
The new snow that has fallen recently came in pretty wet and heavy limiting wind transport somewhat. But with overnight winds out of the ESE picking up keep an eye out for fresh wind slab on Northerly aspects.
Precip has been pretty minimal over the last few days and in general the snowpack seems to be on a healing trend due to warmer temps. That being said human triggered avalanches are possible with fresh wind slab being the main culprit. No natural avalanches have been observed or reported over the last couple days but getting a fair amount of loose wet snow moving under foot on steeper slopes is possible and is hard to get out of if caught. Be wary of fresh cornices on N aspects that may have developed or built up overnight.
