Another round of heavy precipitation Friday night into Saturday will only serve to add more load to the snowpack and keep the avalanche hazard elevated. The avalanche danger will likely peak overnight Friday/Saturday as the heaviest and warmest precipitation impacts the area. However, heavy snow showers and moderate winds may cause very dangerous avalanche conditions to linger into the daylight hours. As the weather cools, and the snow showers decrease, avalanche danger will slowly decline, but if you find yourself in areas of sustained heavier snow showers, expect that the avalanche danger may locally maintain or increase.
We received reports of natural, human-triggered, and explosive triggered avalanches from the Mt Baker area Friday and given similar recent weather impacts, we suspect that the Mountain Loop may behave similarly. At least one of these avalanches released after several people traveled on the same slope. Avalanches occurred on W-N-NE aspects above 4800 ft, where mostly cold dry snow accumulated. A subtle weakness found between Thursday and Friday’s storm snow seemed to be the culprit in most of these events. We expect similar weaknesses within the storm snow again Saturday in the Mountain Loop.