Avalanche Forecast

Good

A very benign weather pattern will bring little precipitation, convective cloud, light winds and sunny periods over the next few days. Saturday: Scattered convective cloud cover, accompanied by light precipitation before lunch. Ridgetop winds light from the W-NW. Alpine temperatures near zero. Freezing levels 1800m falling to valley bottom at night. Sunday/Monday: A dominating ridge with diurnal temperature swings, freezing levels rising to 2000 m, and light ridgetop winds continue. Monday the ridge will start to break down and bands of cloud cover may exist later in the day.

On Thursday reports from the region indicated many natural loose, and loose slab avalanches up to size 2 that are either wind slabs or moist loose slides due to solar warming. In the North Westerly areas of the region, an operator reported a couple skier remote slab avalanches up to size 2. These occurred on E-S aspects, above 2000 m, on the March 27th layer. Previous reports from last weekend or early in the week include remotely triggered size 3 and a natural avalanche with a 2 km wide crown was reported on an east facing aspect which started in the storm snow and then stepped down to the March 27th crust/facet combo. These shouldn't be forgotten yet; especially this weekend.

Recent snow accumulations range from 20-40 cm over the past few days. 40-80 cm of snow from the past week is sitting on a reactive weak layer over a crust. This weak layer was buried March 27th in the Interior. We've received recent reports from the field of large, destructive avalanches occurring on this layer. Remote triggering (from afar) has also been reported. This indicates the likelihood and potential sensitivity of this layer. Slopes below 1000 m continue to experience little or no overnight refreeze (recovery). The deeper early February surface hoar layers seem to have been unreactive in the short term but still remain a concern with very heavy triggers such as a cornice fall, or step down avalanches.