Another round of snow, wind, and warm temperatures!
Natural avalanches are expected - avoid avalanche terrain and overhead hazard. Weak layers may produce full path avalanches.
A layer of surface hoar and a melt-freeze crust lurk in the middle of the snowpack. If triggered, it will produce a large and dangerous avalanche.
Ongoing loading will continue unstable conditions. Slabs may fail on a variety of mid storm interfaces.
We expect widespread natural avalanche activity to occur with the warm temperatures, wind and rain. Slabs may run within the recent storm snow, or on buried weak layers.
Storm totals continue to rise! Another 20-50 cm of new snow adds to the 50-80 cm of rapidly settling snow from the last week.
Below all of this storm snow, sits a weak layer of surface hoar - most likely in sheltered treeline features. Wide propagating, remotely triggered avalanches have been recently triggered on this layer, which appears to be widespread south of Highway 16 and spottier north of the highway.
Below this is a hard melt-freeze crust from mid-November that may be an issue in the south of the region, especially where combined with facets.
Sunday Night
Mostly cloudy. 2 to 10 mm of precipitation as snow or rain at treeline. 50 km/h south ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -1 °C. Freezing level 1800 m.
Monday
Cloudy. 15 to 25 mm of precipitation as snow or rain at treeline. 50 km/h south ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature 0 °C. Freezing level 2000 m.
Tuesday
Mostly cloudy. 10 to 25 cm of snow. 40 km/h southwest ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -4 °C. Freezing level 1000 m.
Wednesday
Mostly cloudy. 5 to 15 cm of snow. 30 km/h southwest ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -6 °C. Freezing level 200 m.
More details can be found in the Mountain Weather Forecast.
