Avalanche Forecast

Partly cloudy weather with a slight chance of a few light rain showers should be seen this evening to Thursday morning. Most areas will see no precipitation. Decreasing clouds should be seen Thursday afternoon and night. Winds will be light with a slow warming trend.

This weather will cause little change in snow conditions and an overall low danger.

The limited avalanche problem to watch for should be loose wet avalanches. Watch for wet snow deeper than a few inches on steep solar slopes. But the likelihood and size will be listed as unlikely and small respectively.

Due to the low snowpack at lower elevations watch for terrain hazards such as open creeks, partially covered rocks and vegetation.

Last weekend a warm front caused high snow levels and rain. Most NWAC sites west of the crest had about 1-3 inches of rain. This caused loose wet avalanches, some possible wet slab avalanches and consolidation. West of the crest a lot of water was seen in and draining from the snow pack.

More mild and some sunny weather was seen Sunday to today.

Pro-observer Jeremy Allyn was at Nason Ridge at Stevens Pass on Sunday and found the January 15th facet/crust interface under a settled and moist to wet 45 cm of snow. While this layer gave a CTH RP at a density change below the crust it seemed unlikely to propagate. With this mild weather the facets will be rounding and the interface should be strengthening and stabilizing.

NWAC forecaster Dennis D'Amico found previous loose wet avalanches on Monday on this SE aspect at about 6500 feet in the Paradise Glacier Valley, possibly triggered by small cornice drops during the weekend rain event. Here are a couple of his photos.

The snowpack in most areas west of the crest should consist of stable consolidated rounded grains or melt forms and crusts from multiple warm periods this winter.