Spring skiing is here. Early starts and early finishes are crucial to playing safe! Although supportive in the morning, the upper snowpack is moist and will breakdown quickly with daytime warming.
Weather Forecast
Partly cloudy and unsettled conditions with a chance of flurries are forecast for today and tomorrow. A strong high pressure ridge will dominate the weather pattern this weekend with sunny skies and warm temperatures.
Snowpack Summary
A 15 cm Knife hard crust formed overnight at Rogers Pass. In high elevation locations this hard crust overlies approximately 60 cm of weak, moist or wet snow over a dense and well consolidated base. At low elevations the snowpack is isothermal and rapidly receding. At Mt. Fidelity the snowpack is at 75% of its normal height.
Avalanche Summary
No new avalanches were observed through the highway corridor yesterday. One occurrence was noted from Tuesday, a size 2.5 wet slab on the SW face of Cheops Mountain at about 2500 metres,
Problems
Loose Wet
Loose Wet avalanches are the release of wet unconsolidated snow or slush. These avalanches typically occur within layers of wet snow near the surface of the snowpack, but they may quickly gouge into lower snowpack layers. Like Loose Dry Avalanches, they start at a point and entrain snow as they move downhill, forming a fan-shaped avalanche. Other names for loose-wet avalanches include point-release avalanches or sluffs. Loose Wet avalanches can trigger slab avalanches that break into deeper snow layers.
Wet Slabs
Wet Slab avalanches are the release of a cohesive layer of snow (a slab) that is generally moist or wet when the flow of liquid water weakens the bond between the slab and the surface below (snow or ground). They often occur during prolonged warming events and/or rain-on-snow events. Wet Slabs can be very unpredictable and destructive.