Avalanche forecast

Olympics

Northwest Avalanche Center
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Avalanche danger

Tue
Alpine
3 · Considerable
Treeline
3 · Considerable
Below
3 · Considerable
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Out of date — this forecast expired 4 years ago. You’re viewing past conditions, not the current bulletin.

Highlights

More rain will maintain potentially dangerous avalanche conditions in the Olympics Monday. In a situation like this, it's more about the consequences of these larger and more powerful slides. Stay off of steep open slopes and limit any time you spend underneath them.

Avalanche problems

  • Wet Slabs

    • Alpine
    • Treeline
    • Below treeline
    Likelihood
    Likely
    Size
    1.5–2.5

    Three straight days of rain…. Yuck. At this point in the cycle, it's easy to think most natural slides have occurred. However, with unstable wet snow, the snowpack can continue to peel apart resulting in several rounds of avalanches and blocks of snow shedding from steep rocky faces. It can even be hard to pin down exactly which type of wet problem you may encounter: wet slab, glide, loose wet, or cornice. In all cases, these slides tend to be larger, more powerful, and difficult to predict. You don’t want to be under one of these slopes if it fails. So, besides staying off of steep slopes over 35 degrees, limit any time you spend traveling underneath them. Even traveling across an avalanche path carries with it more risk than normal.

    (12/24/2022)

    Example: A large natural wet avalanche below treeline in Mt Rainier National Park on Christmas Eve. You could see similar slides Monday. 

    Photo: NPS Rainier Rangers

Avalanche Discussion

So far during this warm series of storms Hurrican Ridge has received 2.09in of rain since 12/23 and counting. This was a big change to the very dry, cold, and layered snowpack. Currently, we don’t really know how the mountains handled this huge shift. It's reasonable to believe that natural avalanches occurred on Christmas Eve during the meat of the storm. However, we don’t know what type, how large, or on what layer they failed. 

Given the current volume of water, previous snowpack structure, and ongoing wet weather, it will take a significant cooling trend to help lower the avalanche danger. On Monday, snow levels will dip after a cold front passes during the morning. This may allow a bit of dry snow to fall at the highest elevations and drift into small wind-loaded pockets. These isolated wind slabs should be relatively small and easy to avoid. Watch out for smooth pillow-like drifts on the lee sides of ridges or exposed slopes in the alpine.

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