Avalanche Forecast

Fair - Timing, track, or intensity of incoming weather is uncertain on Monday

Mild temperatures and strong ridgetop winds persist through the forecast period. SUN: Cloudy with sunny breaks. FZLVL tops out near 1900m in the afternoon. Trace to 5 cm of snow expected. Ridgetop winds Strong to Extreme NW. Moderate Chinook. MON: A fast moving cold front crosses over the region, the timing of which is a bit hard to pin down. The current best guess is late in the day Monday. Regardless, freezing levels will fall with the passage of the cold front & 5 - 10 cm of snow is expected. Winds should increase with frontal passage, we can expect strong winds out of the W, switching to NW in the evening. Tue: A ridge of high pressure slides into the region bringing more seasonal cool temperatures, high solar & light winds.

Our field team remoted a size 2 avalanche from the flats Wednesday. It's worth checking out the details of the incident report linked to this forecast as it illustrates just how tender the persistent slab problem is in the So. Rockies. On Saturday a group of sledders remote triggered a size 1.5 avalanche which failed on the Feb.09 SH in the Coal Creek area on a North facing, 37 degree slope at 1600m.

Strong winds and have formed wind slabs up to 20 cm deep in wind exposed terrain at and above treeline as of Saturday afternoon. The Feb. 09 surface hoar is now down between 40 & 90 cm. The depth varies throughout the region. This weak layer continue to perform, our head field technician was out for a ski and noticed a remote triggered avalanche on Saturday. See the details below. Snowpack tests continue to show sudden moderate failures on this interface. This weekend the upper snowpack is changing character as strong to extreme winds at ridge top & mild temperatures form the old storm snow into a more cohesive slab. Lingering concern remains for basal facets, particularly in shallower snowpack areas with steep, rocky start zones. Our field team was out in the Crowsnest Thursday where they observed a much stronger snowpack. The So. Rockies forecast is intended to give trends for the region as a whole, and as such, conditions will vary between the different sub regions.