Warming trend a welcome change. Increasing hazard for Ice Climbers in steep solar aspects. Start early, finish early!
Weather Forecast
Spring like warming trend with a distinct south westerly flow. Freezing levels rising to treeline elevations into the weekend. Trace to 10cm of snow overnight Thursday and clearing by Friday afternoon. Strong, gusting westerly winds in the Alpine.
Snowpack Summary
Facetting has weakened the snowpack in isolated areas in the forecast region. Melt freeze cycle BTL with moist surface snow on steeper, rocky solar aspects. The upper snowpack is 50 to 80 cm, over the seasonally persistent instability. Wind effect in open areas in the alpine and treeline elevations.
Avalanche Summary
Explosive assisted, solar induced, loose dry avalanches to sz 1.5 in BTL south and south-west aspects entraining the facets and running fast.
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.
Loose Dry
Loose Dry avalanches are the release of dry unconsolidated snow and typically occur within layers of soft snow near the surface of the snowpack. These avalanches start at a point and entrain snow as they move downhill, forming a fan-shaped avalanche. Other names for loose-dry avalanches include point-release avalanches or sluffs.