The heavy rain on Wednesday-Thursday will make the snowpack unstable. Conservative terrain use and avoiding overhead hazard is critical.
Confidence
Moderate - Due to the number of field observations
Weather Forecast
Warm and wet still on Thursday. Cooling with light precipitation on Friday, and improving for Saturday. THURSDAY: Rain (20-30mm) / Moderate southwesterly winds / Freezing level around 1200 m. FRIDAY: Mostly cloudy with isolated flurries (local accumulations 5-10cm) / High temperatures to +1 Celsius / Light-moderate southerly winds / Freezing level around 1100 m. SATURDAY: Cloudy with sunny periods / Ridge winds light southerly / Freezing level around 900m / High temperatures to +1 Celsius.
Avalanche Summary
No new reported. Ski testing of small slopes gave no results on Wednesday.
Snowpack Summary
The 50-70 cm of snow from last week has been saturated by 100mm + of rain on Tuesday through Wednesday. So far, all has been bonding well to a knife hard crust buried Feb 3rd. That said, snowpack tests near the Cypress ski area on the weekend gave sudden planar, propagation-likely results down 70cm on the Feb 3rd widespread crust layer. This may become a sliding layer on Thursday with the continued rain.In the alpine, where the precipitation fell as snow, the storm slabs have taken longer to settle out and still are a concern: Dig down to test the bond of the more recent snow layers, and to see how the rain is affecting it. The mid and lower snowpack are settled and well bonded with the average snowpack depth at treeline 250-300 cm.
Problems
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.