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Weather Forecast
Clear overnight with freezing down to valley bottoms and temperatures close to -15 in the alpine. Light northwest winds and clear skies with freezing levels rising to near 1000 metres on Saturday. Some cloud developing Saturday night and continuing during the day Sunday with no precipitation and light southwest winds. Cloudy with a couple of cm of new snow and moderate northerly winds on Monday.
Avalanche Summary
No new avalanches reported.
Snowpack Summary
Light amounts of wind-pressed snow (5-20 cm) cover the previous variable snow surface of surface hoar, crusts, or wind affected snow depending on aspect and elevation. The "Valentine's Day" crust is just below the surface and is now strong and thick in most places. Isolated thin wind slabs may still be reactive in high elevation lee terrain, and cornices remain large and weak. The late-Jan crust/surface hoar layer (up to 100 cm deep) and the mid-January surface hoar (80-120 cm deep) are generally dormant, and chances of triggering these weaknesses have decreased dramatically. However, triggering may be possible with a large input such as cornice fall, or an avalanche stepping down, especially on slopes that see a lot of sun.
Problems
Persistent Slabs
Persistent Slab avalanches are the release of a cohesive layer of snow (a slab) in the middle to upper snowpack, when the bond to an underlying persistent weak layer breaks. Persistent layers include: surface hoar, depth hoar, near-surface facets, or faceted snow. Persistent weak layers can continue to produce avalanches for days, weeks or even months, making them especially dangerous and tricky. As additional snow and wind events build a thicker slab on top of the persistent weak layer, this avalanche problem may develop into a Deep Persistent Slab.