Avalanche Forecast

Fair - Timing of incoming weather is uncertain on Sunday

Overnight and Sunday: Light NW winds and Alpine temperatures down to about -12.0 overnight. A warm front is forecast to move into the interior during the day that may cause an above freezing level to develop near treeline. NW winds are expected to increase during the day and become strong and gusty in the evening.Monday:  Moderate westerly winds combined with temperatures of -7.0 in the alpine and very light precipitation.Tuesday:Strong SW winds in the morning as a cold front slides into the region. Expect 20-30 mm of precipitation falling as snow as the freezing level drops down to the valleys.

Some very soft slabs were released with explosives control up to size 1.5 and heavy sluffing reported from ski cutting. There was one natural avalanche size 3.0 reported from the Southern Selkirks that likely released on the November rain crust.

There has been 30-40 cms of new snow that fell with light winds in the past 48 hours. This brings the recent storm snow amount up to about 70-80 cms. There is widespread sluffing in the new snow in steep unsupported terrain, but no reports of slab avalanche failures in the storm snow. The late November surface hoar is now buried more than a metre deep and close to 150 cms in some of the snowier areas. This layer has mostly been found between 1700-2000 metres in elevation. There have not been any new reports of avalanches sliding on this layer. The early November rain crust is deeply buried. There was one report of a size 3.0 avalanche that released naturally on this layer in the southern Selkirks. I think we need to keep this problem on the front page through another storm cycle, and see how it reacts to more loading and rapid temperature changes.