Swan Range

The snowpack is generally stable, and triggering a large avalanche is unlikely. You could find thin slabs of wind-blown snow near the highest ridgelines and summits reactive to the weight of your skis or machine. Today's sunshine may warm and wet the surface, potentially triggering small, loose snow avalanches in steep terrain facing the sun. 

This morning, we dropped the avalanche hazard to LOW for the first time this season. We are comfortable reducing the danger rating after a historic week of warm weather and heavy precipitation tested our early-season snowpack. 

Although triggering a large slide is unlikely, riders should not let their guard down.

• Small, recently formed pockets of wind-drifted snow may exist near the highest ridgelines and summits. Dunes and an etched surface confirm the wind has been at work, while cracking around your skis or machine indicates you have found a sensitive slab. These features should be easy to identify and manage. 
• Today's potential sunshine may warm the surface of recently fallen snow and trigger small wet-snow instabilities. Resulting slides will be larger in long-running gullies and on steep, sustained pitches where the most recent snow fell. These sluffs may run surprisingly far on the stout underlying crust. Yesterday (Saturday), a party on Hellroaring Peak triggered rollerballs and small wet loose slides on steep slopes in Friday's 2 inches of new snow. Mitigate this problem by managing your sluff or moving to a shady aspect if you find the surface becoming gloppy. 
• Traveling at mid elevations remains treacherous in places due to a breakable crust or slide for life conditions. 

With a day of benign weather on tap, let's look at a few key weather statistics related to the recent Atmospheric River.

• The Grave Creek SNOTEL station in the northern Whitefish Range recorded 8.6 inches of liquid water (rain) in just under 4 days. 5.6 inches of this fell in 24 hours.
• The Middle Fork of the Flathead River at the USGS West Glacier gauge rose from 1040 cubic feet per second (cfs) on Monday morning to 20,700 cfs on Thursday. This flow was over 18 times more than Monday’s reading. Thursday’s reading was higher than any day during the spring 2025 runoff.
• Above-average temperatures were recorded throughout the event across all elevations and ranges. Please see this chart, which documents balmy 0500 temperatures on Thursday morning when valley-floor temperatures topped 50°F and upper elevations were above freezing.
• Windy conditions developed, including a 24-hour average wind speed of 47 mph with a maximum gust of 80 mph at Aeneas Ridge. Both of these numbers are well above the extreme or gale-force classification.