Avalanche Forecast

Moderate - Timing, track, or intensity of incoming weather system is uncertain on Thursday

A significant weather system is expected to impact the Coast Wednesday night through Thursday night delivering snow and significant amounts of southwest wind. A ridge of high pressure will start to build over the Pacific again starting Friday. On Saturday and Sunday a rather stagnant airmass should allow warming to spill into the region. THURSDAY: Overcast, freezing level at valley bottom, light to moderate south/southwest wind, 5 to 15 cm of snow possible.THURSDAY NIGHT: Overcast, freezing level at valley bottom, light to moderate south/southwest wind, 5 to 10 cm of snow possible.FRIDAY: Scattered cloud, freezing level around 600 m, light variable wind, trace of snow possible.SATURDAY: Overcast, freezing level beginning near 600 m, rising to 2000 m throughout the day, light southwest wind, no precipitation expected.

On Wednesday the upper snowpack was largely unaffected by control work, but it did produce a few size 1.0 avalanches on unknown aspects. On Tuesday control work produced storm slab avalanches to size 1.5 on a wide variety of aspects. On Monday control work produced avalanches to size 2 with crowns averaging 20 cm in depth.

10 to 15 cm of light density snow from Monday night and Tuesday now rests on 20 to 30 cm of slightly heavier snow that fell over the weekend. This snow was redistributed by moderate to strong southeast through southwest winds on Sunday. All of this snow is above the the January 6th crust which is present to at least 2100 m, maybe higher. This crust is reportedly breakable below 2100 m. Below the crust there is about 20 cm of settled moist snow.Up to 100 cm below the surface there is a widespread melt-freeze crust that was buried on December 15th, but this layer has not produced any recent avalanche activity and is trending towards dormancy. Beneath the mid-December crust, the lower snowpack is generally strong and well settled.