Avalanche Forecast

Fair - Due to the number of field observations

Arctic air dominates the province. The weather remains benign with cold and mostly clear skies through Wednesday. High level moisture is developing on Thursday bringing some cloud cover. Alpine temperatures will be steady near -15 accompanied by moderate NW winds. On Friday things begin to change, however; at this point confidence is poor in model solutions with precipitation amounts.

On Monday, no new avalanches were reported in the South Rockies. However, wind slabs to size 2 were observed in the Lizard range. One was a natural avalanche and the other was skier controlled. With forecast northwest winds, we could see a new round of wind slab activity as surface snow gets redistributed onto south-facing slopes.

Up to 30cm of low-density snow exists on the surface. In the alpine and at treeline, strong to locally extreme winds have transported this snow into stiff and reactive wind slabs in exposed lee areas. Up to 70 cm below the surface (more in wind affected areas) you may find a crust which formed in December. The crust, which may have surface hoar on top of it, may extend into the alpine to at least 2100 m. Where the crust exists, it may be bridging triggers from penetrating to deeper persistent weaknesses. However, on high alpine slopes above where the rain crust formed, or in areas where rain didn't occur, deeply buried facets may still be susceptible to triggering especially in thinner snowpack areas.