Avalanche Forecast

Partly cloudy weather with a slight chance of a few light rain showers should be seen in the Cascades 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. NWAC sites at Mt Hood had about .5-1.5 inches of rain. Mostly sunny warm temperatures have been seen so far this week.

Last week the Meadows pro- patrol reported crusts and melt forms in the upper pack last week with good stability. Some low density snow from the previous storm was transported to N-NE slopes near and above treeline.

Then over the weekend during the warm rainy weather the Meadows pro-patrol reported a saturated upper snowpack but little in the way of avalanches.

This morning the Meadows pro-patrol continued to report a surface crust and melt form layers in the upper snow pack.

Overall the snow pack at Mt Hood should also predominately consist of stable consolidated rounded grains or melt form layers and crusts from warm periods so far this winter.