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Avalanche Forecast

Archived

Jan 20th, 2016–Jan 21st, 2016

Alpine
Natural avalanches possible, human triggered probable.
Treeline
Natural avalanches unlikely, human triggered possible.
Below Treeline
Natural avalanches unlikely, human triggered possible.
Alpine
Natural and human triggered avalanches likely.
Treeline
Natural avalanches possible, human triggered probable.
Below Treeline
Natural avalanches possible, human triggered probable.
Alpine
Natural and human triggered avalanches likely.
Treeline
Natural avalanches possible, human triggered probable.
Below Treeline
Natural avalanches possible, human triggered probable.

Regions

Glacier.

Expect solar triggered avalanches if the sun comes out today; minimize your exposure to avalanche paths if they are in the sun. A storm arriving on Thursday has the potential to pack a punch, bumping up danger.

Weather Forecast

Flurries should taper off this morning, with broken skies and sunny breaks possible this afternoon. Alpine temps will be around -6, with moderate W'ly winds. A system arriving later on Thursday will bring up to 20cm by Friday morning, with strong SW winds. On Friday the storm continues with freezing levels rising to 1700m and another 20cm of snow. 

Snowpack Summary

Low density powder overlies a soft slab that sits on the January 4th interface, down ~40cm. This interface is variable; with the largest surface hoar below 1700m. It appears to be touchiest in our region on steep S-SW aspects where the surface hoar sits on a sun crust, as shown in this video. On other aspects it sits on ~20cm of loose facets.

Avalanche Summary

A size 2.5 was accidentally triggered by skiers yesterday. The avalanche was on a S aspect at 2500m, was 40-50cm deep, 40m wide and ran 200m. In addition, numerous natural avalanches occurred, many triggered by solar. Most were size 2, occurring from all aspects and ran onto the avalanche fans. Sluffing continues to occur when skiing steep slopes.

Confidence

Intensity of incoming weather systems is uncertain

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.