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Avalanche Forecast

Archived

Mar 18th, 2019–Mar 19th, 2019

Alpine
Natural and human triggered avalanches likely.
Treeline
Natural and human triggered avalanches likely.
Below Treeline
Natural avalanches possible, human triggered probable.
Alpine
Natural and human triggered avalanches likely.
Treeline
Natural and human triggered avalanches likely.
Below Treeline
Natural avalanches possible, human triggered probable.
Alpine
Natural and human triggered avalanches likely.
Treeline
Natural and human triggered avalanches likely.
Below Treeline
Natural avalanches possible, human triggered probable.

Regions

Lizard-Flathead.

This is a good time to avoid avalanche terrain.

Confidence

High -

Weather Forecast

Monday night: Clear. Light northeast winds. Freezing levels rising to 2800 metres.Tuesday: Sunny. Light variable winds. Alpine high temperatures around +7 with freezing levels rising to 3100 metres and remaining elevated overnight.Wednesday: Sunny. Light southeast winds. Alpine high temperatures around +9 with freezing levels around 3200 metres, dropping slightly overnight.Thursday: Sunny. Light southwest winds. Aline high temperatures around +7 with freezing levels around 3000 metres, dropping slightly overnight.

Avalanche Summary

Reports from Sunday showed a continuation of natural loose wet avalanche activity focused on sun exposed aspects, with some releases reaching size 2.5 as they gouged into the snowpack to entrain more mass.Saturday's reports are of significant warming but only small loose wet avalanches. Neighbouring regions (for example Kananaskis Country) where the snowpack is thinner and weaker entered a natural avalanche cycle involving most aspects, most elevations, and most snowpack layers.On Thursday, a group of riders remotely triggered a size 1.5 persistent slab from 100 metres away. See the MIN report for more details. This is an important piece of data when considering the effect of forecast strong sunshine and warming on persistent slab problems that developed earlier in the season.Looking forward, the type of activity shown above can be expected to continue, expand to all aspects, and perhaps intensify as temperatures remain elevated and overnight cooling remains weak.

Snowpack Summary

Upper snowpack: Getting warm and moist during the day, maybe forming ephemeral crusts overnight. On sunny aspects there may be buried crusts serving as sliding layers. On lee slopes there may be buried hard layers of wind effected snow (buried wind slabs). There might even be some good old soft snow (powder hiding out on high elevation shadier places). Mid pack: The mid-snowpack consists of sugary faceted grains (facets) of different hardness. Two older layers of surface hoar still exist down 55-80 and down 95-150 around 1600-1900m. See Avalanche Activity section below for why this is relevant!Lower pack: Was reportedly strong in deep snowpack regions, but I have doubts in shallower areas where the long February cold weakened even the deep layers. Now add a bunch of heat and sun ... the snowpack won't be feelin' the love. Forecasting how many sunny days and warm nights it's going to take to wake up deeper layers is tough; however, I can say with confidence it's a good time to stand aside, watch from afar, let the mountains shed their coat, and come back to the game when things return to normal after the temperatures cool.

Problems

Loose Wet

Loose Wet avalanches are the release of wet unconsolidated snow or slush. These avalanches typically occur within layers of wet snow near the surface of the snowpack, but they may quickly gouge into lower snowpack layers. Like Loose Dry Avalanches, they start at a point and entrain snow as they move downhill, forming a fan-shaped avalanche. Other names for loose-wet avalanches include point-release avalanches or sluffs. Loose Wet avalanches can trigger slab avalanches that break into deeper snow layers.

Persistent Slabs

Persistent Slab avalanches are the release of a cohesive layer of snow (a slab) in the middle to upper snowpack, when the bond to an underlying persistent weak layer breaks. Persistent layers include: surface hoar, depth hoar, near-surface facets, or faceted snow. Persistent weak layers can continue to produce avalanches for days, weeks or even months, making them especially dangerous and tricky. As additional snow and wind events build a thicker slab on top of the persistent weak layer, this avalanche problem may develop into a Deep Persistent Slab.