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Avalanche Forecast

Archived

Jan 31st, 2015–Feb 1st, 2015

Alpine
Natural avalanches unlikely.
Treeline
Natural avalanches unlikely.
Below Treeline
Natural avalanches unlikely.
Alpine
Natural avalanches unlikely.
Treeline
Natural avalanches unlikely.
Below Treeline
Natural avalanches unlikely.
Alpine
Natural avalanches unlikely, human triggered possible.
Treeline
Natural avalanches unlikely.
Below Treeline
Natural avalanches unlikely.

Regions

Kootenay Boundary.

Cooling temperatures and a strong melt freeze crust on the surface have made triggering slab avalanches unlikely in all but isolated areas.

Confidence

Fair - Due to the number of field observations

Weather Forecast

The freezing level should be dropping to valley bottoms again overnight and is not expected to rise above 600m until possibly Tuesday afternoon. 2-5 cm of snow is expected on Sunday with a high of around -4 at treeline. Similar temperatures are expected for Monday along with a further 2-6 cm of accumulations. Warmer temperatures and light snowfall amounts of 1-2cm are possible on Tuesday, and may fall as rain at lower elevations below treeline.

Avalanche Summary

No new avalanches have been reported.

Snowpack Summary

Recent sunny weather and high freezing levels have created a mostly supportive widespread melt-freeze crust thats been reported on all aspects up to 2400m. A widespread new layer of surface hoar up to 15mm in size is said to be developing on top of this crust. The mid-January weak layer of buried surface hoar is down about 20-50 cm and continues to give planar results in snow profile tests. The mid-December crust/facet/surface hoar layer can generally be found down around 50cm deep in low snowpack areas, and about 100cm down in deeper snowpack areas. There may still be potential to trigger this deeper layer from shallow spots and in very isolated areas.

Problems

Persistent Slabs

Persistent Slab avalanches are the release of a cohesive layer of snow (a slab) in the middle to upper snowpack, when the bond to an underlying persistent weak layer breaks. Persistent layers include: surface hoar, depth hoar, near-surface facets, or faceted snow. Persistent weak layers can continue to produce avalanches for days, weeks or even months, making them especially dangerous and tricky. As additional snow and wind events build a thicker slab on top of the persistent weak layer, this avalanche problem may develop into a Deep Persistent Slab.