Avalanche forecast

Olympics

Northwest Avalanche Center
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Avalanche danger

Mon
Alpine
3 · Considerable
Treeline
3 · Considerable
Below
3 · Considerable
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Out of date — this forecast expired 4 years ago. You’re viewing past conditions, not the current bulletin.

Highlights

Recent warm and rainy weather certainly feels like the Grinch that stole Christmas along with all of our soft snow. Even though Sunday should be relatively dry, unstable wet snow will linger and maintain dangerous conditions. Avoid traveling on steep open slopes and limit any time you spend below them.

Avalanche problems

  • Wet Slabs

    • Alpine
    • Treeline
    • Below treeline
    Likelihood
    Unlikely
    Size
    1.5–2.5

    While the bulk of the rain has stopped, unstable wet snow remains. It’s tough to put a name on the exact problem you’ll encounter. You could see loose wet, wet slab, glide, and cornice avalanches. In some cases, blocks of snow may shed from cliffs or other steep complex terrain features. You certainly don’t want to be under one of these slides if they fail. Avoid traveling on steep open slopes and limit any time you spend underneath them. 

    Even though wet avalanches are common in the Olympics, setups like this are particularly challenging. The likelihood of triggering an avalanche is decreasing, but a few natural avalanches could still occur. So, in this case, it's more about the consequences of these often larger and more powerful slides, than whether or not we will trigger any particular slopes.

    (12/23/2022)

    Example: Natural wet slab avalanche below treeline at Mt Rainier. NW 3800ft early in this storm cycle. Similar slides could still occur in the Olympics on Christmas. 

    Photo: NPS Rainier Rangers

Avalanche Discussion

You could find a brief break in the weather on Christmas morning to go play with your new toys in the snow. Unfortunately, it looks like Santa will also bring us coal in our stockings in the form of rain showers in the afternoon. This additional water, shouldn’t significantly impact the avalanche danger, but it could make travel a bit more slushy. 

On Saturday warming temperatures and stormy weather brought more than an inch of rain to the Hurricane ridge. We don’t know how that impacted the snowpack. However, it seems reasonable that given the very cold, dry, and layered snowpack prior to this storm, natural avalanches occurred. What type and exactly which layer they failed on remains a mystery. 

If you make it out on Christmas Day, share your holiday greetings with your community by submitting an observation. The more information we have, the easier it is to produce an accurate forecast so that you can have a safer day in the backcountry.

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