Avalanche Forecast

A weak frontal system should spread light rain and snow over the area tonight along with gradually lowering snow levels overnight. Light precipitation should taper off Tuesday afternoon.   

Generally light precipitation and a cooling trend should not greatly increase the avalanche danger on Tuesday.  However, precipitation amounts with this pattern have been poorly handled, so watch for shallow wind and storm slabs mainly in the near and above treeline zones. Moderately strong W to NW winds in the alpine overnight may develop new wind slab on lee N thru SE aspects. 

Very little recent snow and an overall very shallow snowpack are limiting the avalanche potential on most terrain, at least in the Hurricane Ridge area of the Olympics. Recent weather has been a mix of dry warm and sunny weather with periodic weak frontal passages depositing light amounts of new snow and/or rain. 

In the Hurricane Ridge area the only slopes with sufficient snow cover to create an avalanche potential are on steep shaded northerly facing slopes near or above treeline. In those areas, the snowpack mostly consists of firm surface or near surface crusts with possible shallow recent wind deposits.  Slopes exposed to either wind or sun have little to no snow to just above treeline.

Light rain and warm temperatures on Monday may have caused shallow loose wet slides at higher elevations that had available loose surface snow. 

There has been no recent avalanche activity reported in the Olympics.