West Slopes South

A return to winter should help the snowpack gain strength Friday. Mostly cloudy skies, cooling temperatures, and minimal new snow will create generally safe avalanche conditions. Instead, you could encounter a thin breakable crust with wet heavy snow underneath.

The past week's weather has been quite the ride as we flip-flopped back and forth between winter and spring. Along with this, our avalanche concerns continued to cycle between wet and dry, and the avalanche danger rose and fell. Friday will fit right along with this pattern.

Following a significant winter storm that brought 2.5-3ft of snow to the West South, freezing levels and temperatures soared. Highs Thursday reached into the 40s and 50s across the zone with Paradise hitting 60 F. Needless to say this resulted in a natural wet avalanche cycle. Numerous piles of rollerballs and loose wet avalanches were observed. However, the more notable slides were at least 8 wet slab avalanches that occurred on Thursday near the White Pass backcountry and a wet slab in the Sourdough Range near Mt Rainier’s NE side. As of Thursday afternoon (5:30 pm) this cycle is continuing to play out and we may hear of more interesting avalanches. 

On Friday, temperatures should quickly cool and help the snowpack gain strength. While we can’t rule out a lingering wet avalanche issue in the morning, a thin surface crust should significantly limit any loose wet avalanche potential. If you see a slide, it will most likely be a block of snow shedding from a very steep or rocky area. Instead, a weak overnight freeze should leave us with a thin crust that creates punchy travel conditions with heavy wet snow underneath. Sunbreaks mid-day could be enough to weaken this crust and lead to an increase in loose wet avalanche potential for a few areas. However, we feel this will be unlikely and you’ll mostly just see piles of new rollerballs before clouds once again hide the sun. Later in the day, snow should return. The 1-3” of snow across the zone won’t be enough to pose any real risk. At most, you could possibly find a very thin wind drifted slab the size of a dining table.