Weather Forecast
Thursday: Unsettled conditions with scattered flurries and sunny breaks. Freezing levels around 1000m and light northerly winds. Friday and Saturday: A ridge of high pressure is expected to keep things mainly sunny and dry. Freezing levels are expected to hover around 800-1000m on Friday and slightly rise to 1200m for Saturday. Winds should remain light from the north.
Avalanche Summary
Reports from Tuesday include numerous easily triggered wind and storm slab avalanches up to Size 3. The slabs showed a high propensity to propagate fractures with remote and sympathetic triggers and entire bowls releasing wall-to-wall. Most of the avalanches involved the most recent storm snow, but a few stepped-down over a metre to the crust from late March.
Snowpack Summary
Over 60cm of new snow in the past couple of days was redistributed by strong southwesterly winds into thick wind slabs. A predominately crusty weak interface from late March, now down 50-150cm, remains a potential failure layer for large slab avalanches, especially with heavy triggers such as cornice falls and step-down avalanches. The potential for remote triggering, step down avalanches, and wide propagations, makes the current snowpack structure particularly tricky to manage.
Problems
Wind Slabs
Wind Slab avalanches are the release of a cohesive layer of snow (a slab) formed by the wind. Wind typically transports snow from the upwind sides of terrain features and deposits snow on the downwind side. Wind slabs are often smooth and rounded and sometimes sound hollow, and can range from soft to hard. Wind slabs that form over a persistent weak layer (surface hoar, depth hoar, or near-surface facets) may be termed Persistent Slabs or may develop into Persistent Slabs.
Storm Slabs
Storm Slab avalanches are the release of a cohesive layer (a slab) of new snow that breaks within new snow or on the old snow surface. Storm-slabs typically last between a few hours and few days (following snowfall). Storm-slabs that form over a persistent weak layer (surface hoar, depth hoar, or near-surface facets) may be termed Persistent Slabs or may develop into Persistent Slabs.
Cornices
Cornice Fall is the release of an overhanging mass of snow that forms as the wind moves snow over a sharp terrain feature, such as a ridge, and deposits snow on the downwind (leeward) side. Cornices range in size from small wind drifts of soft snow to large overhangs of hard snow that are 30 feet (10 meters) or taller. They can break off the terrain suddenly and pull back onto the ridge top and catch people by surprise even on the flat ground above the slope. Even small cornices can have enough mass to be destructive and deadly. Cornice Fall can entrain loose surface snow or trigger slab avalanches.