Weisseck, Muhr Valley

Wind slab forms snow slab on weak old snowpack

Wind slab forms snow slab on weak old snowpack

The avalanche risk is considerable above the tree line. The situation is precarious for winter sports. Medium-sized slab avalanches can easily be triggered by individuals in some places, especially from west to north to east, but also in a few places in the southern sector. If wind slabs are disturbed near the surface, there is a high likelihood of avalanches breaking through into deeper layers. The old snowpack is poorly built up across the board: Avalanche prone locations are barely recognisable and require a defensive route choice. In particular, be careful near transitions from a little to a lot of snow and in the entrance areas to steep gullies. Remote triggering is possible in isolated cases.

New and wind slab snow from the past few days has been partially deposited on surface hoar and a soft snow surface. Prone to triggering weak layers can be found in the fresh new and drift snow as well as in the old snowpack. In general, areas with little snow alternate with considerable snowdrift accumulations, some of which are as hard as a board and some of which are already being transformed. Breaks usually occur between the fresh and slightly older layers of drift snow or near the crust that forms the transition to the completely angular old snowpack. Under this crust, the old snowpack consists mainly of deep rime and angular forms, which are interspersed with other crusts in areas with more snow. Snow from early winter can sometimes be found on the ground in the form of a hardness melt-freeze crust.

During the night it rains and snows with a snowfall level between around 1000 and 1200 metres. In the summit regions, 5 - 10 cm of new fallen snow will accumulate. The wind will be brisk at times, peaking at around 50 km/h, but will ease considerably towards the morning and then only blow weakly. Saturday will be changeable at first with mostly dense clouds, but it will soften up more and more during the daytime changes. It will remain mainly dry. The wind will blow weakly from different directions at all altitudes. Temperatures at 2000 metres will be around -3 degrees, at 3000 metres around -9 degrees.

The wind slab problem is slowly improving, but the persistent weak layer problem remains.