Central Cascades

No widespread avalanche problems are expected on Friday. Watch for signs of warming in the surface snow. If the snow surface becomes slushy down to 6 inches or more, you could trigger a small  wet loose avalanche in steep terrain. Always watch for signs of unstable snow on isolated terrain features.

Wind slabs formed early in the week have had time to adjust and stabilize and are now mostly unreactive. There could be some lingering pockets of wind slab in isolated steep terrain that could be triggered with resulting avalanches being small.

COAC observers have found some weak rounding faceted snow in the upper snowpack on shaded northerly facing slopes. This weak snow is close the surface and without a a signifcant load on top of it, I do not exptect it to be a problem.

We have a wide variety of surface riding condtions out there right now. Some slopes have been scoured by the wind down to old melt freeze crust while some areas have a wavy scalloped wind sculpted surface.