Avalanche Forecast

Good - -1

An intense system is moving across the interior ranges today bringing heavy precipitation amounts, rising freezing levels and strong ridgetop southerly-southwesterly winds. Freezing levels could rise to 1900m then fall to 800m before the next system passes. Thursday and Friday we should see freezing levels fall back to valley bottom and accompanied by steady light to moderate precipitation.

Observations are extremely limited at this time. A few small size 1.0 avalanches were reported from the southern part of the region yesterday. The next few days will hold a different story. I'd expect widespread avalanche activity. They may react as storm slab instabilities with potentially triggering any weaknesses lower in the snowpack.

Up to 40cm of new snow has fallen in the southern part of the region. This has been accompanied by moderate to strong winds from the southwest. In the alpine, and treeline new wind slabs are forming lee of ridgelines and terrain features. These wind slabs are sitting on older wind slabs and may have a poor bond. At treeline I suspect there to be some patchy areas of buried surface hoar and older raincrusts down 50-60cm. These may become reactive with the new storm snow load. Snowpack depths are likely in the 60-90cm range at about 1600m and about 150 cms at 2000m.