Northern New Mexico

Dangerous avalanche conditions continue to exist as you can trigger a large and dangerous avalanche that breaks on or near the ground.  Cohesive slabs rest on top of very weak faceted layers deeper down in the snowpack.  These avalanches may break 1 to 3 feet deep and are able to propagate widely across terrain features taking with it most of the season's snowpack. It's possible to trigger an avalanche from long distances away, so avoid traveling on or below slopes over 30 degrees.  Careful snowpack evaluation and cautious route-finding continue to remain essential.

It'll be another beautiful day, with temperatures warming into 20's and low 30's under sunny skies and light west winds.  Over the last week, a series of storms dropped 15 to 20 inches of snow with about 1.9" of SWE.  Over this time period, we haven't seen much of a break from the moderate to strong westerly winds that have drifted snow and loaded slopes into deeper stiffer slabs at upper elevations. 

We currently have a dangerous set-up of very weak faceted sugary like snow near the ground that was widespread prior to these holiday storms over the last week. These faceted persistent weak layers formed in our shallow snowpack during the prolonged periods of dry and cold weather we had earlier in the season and reside under a rain crust from earlier in December. We've now introduced a dense cohesive slab on top that is more uniform and better connected across slopes enabling avalanches to break wider across terrain features. Upper elevations have not had much of a break from wind loading and explosive control work yesterday continues to produce large avalanches failing at or near the ground that have been running long distances.  Crown depths have been 1 to 3 feet with avalanches increasing in size at upper elevations that have seen the most amount of loading.   

The avalanche danger has been slow to decrease over the last week in our overall shallow snowpack, with weak layers still easily able to be collapsed and enough incremental loading from small storms and wind events to keep slabs reactive. The snowpack hasn't had much time to adjust but with a nice stretch of weather ahead and we move further away from loading events, slabs have been stiffening and the snowpack will settle as weak layers adjust to the added weight.  The snowpack has become less talkative than it was earlier in the week, and obvious signs of instability like shooting cracks and whumpfs will not be as widespread as we've been seeing earlier in the week.  However, we continue to get facets near the ground to fail and propagate with easy to moderate force in long-column tests.    

Looking ahead as nice weather continues into next week, we'll be moving into a period of a lower likelihood of triggering an avalanche (than what we've been seeing)  but the consequences still remain high.  The persistent slab problem that is driving avalanche conditions will continue to remain, just with a slightly lower probability of triggering a slide. After prolonged periods of elevated avalanche danger, it's easy to feel the urge to push into steeper terrain as bulls-eye clues like natural avalanches, shooting cracks and loud audible collapses are less present.  But the overall snowpack structure is still very poor with strong over weak layering.  Our persistent weak layers of facets and depth continue to remain very fragile and will be slow to strengthen and heal. The mountains don't operate in the instant gratification world we currently live in, so continue to remain patient as there will be plenty of time to get into steeper terrain when conditons improve. With the potential of another system on Wednesday it might not take much loading to see avalanche conditions increase again.   

We will be going to Friday/Saturday/Sunday for daily forecasts with danger ratings and General Avalanche Information Products Monday - Thursday.