Avalanche Forecast

Another mild and sunny day Sunday is on tap in the Mt Hood area. Light easterly flow will bring slightly cooler temperatures. Wind transportation of snow will be limited to isolated, exposed features where winds can accelerate. Expect shallow new wind slabs and older deep wind slabs on a variety of aspects.

The stout icy surface crust will have a difficult time breaking down, even with warm temperatures and mostly sunny skies. While loose wet avalanche are not expected, monitor changing surface snow conditions. It only takes a few inches of wet surface snow to create loose wet conditions. This is most likely in steep rocky sun exposed terrain where shallow snow and rocks can accelerate the heating process.

Icy surface crust near and below treeline, and a variety of snow surfaces above treeline will continue to make travel difficult in the Mt Hood area.

A building high pressure ridge brought warm temperatures and mostly sunny skies to the Mt Hood area Saturday. This allowed the first real views into above treeline terrain in several days.

Friday, a rain and freezing rain event created icy surface conditions up to at least 7000 feet. While this surface crust softened on Saturday it did not entirely break down.

Above treeline, W-SW winds Wednesday through Friday combined with significant snowfall have likely created a variety of snow surface conditions, including firm wind slabs in the alpine.

Observations

Observations Friday from Mt Hood Meadows reported a supportable rain and freezing rain crust to 7000 feet. The ice crust prevented winds from transporting snow near and below treeline.