East Slopes South

Expect a cloudy day Tuesday with a chance for light rain and a dusting of high elevation snow. A cooling trend will further stabilize the snowpack and avalanches will be unlikely.

Tuesday brings a change in the weather pattern with cooling temperatures, increasing winds, and light precipitation. By afternoon, there is a very small chance you could find shallow wind slabs in lee terrain at the highest elevations. Below 5000ft, the snowpack is well adjusted to being wet and light rain won't be enough to increase the avalanche danger. Elsewhere, firm and frozen snow surfaces will limit the potential for additional cornice fall, glide, and wet avalanche activity. 

The snowpack experienced a significant and prolonged thaw MLK weekend, with a stretch of sunny skies and spring-like weather. Remote weather stations around the East South recorded above freezing temperatures for the past 3-4 days, and high temperatures even hit 51F on Saturday at the Green Lake SNOTEL (5920ft). Some wet avalanches ran during the heat of the day on the sunniest slopes, but were small. A few cornices sagged and fractured as well. The most notable effect of the warm-up was the decrease in snow height and snow cover on sun-exposed slopes and at low elevations. Check out the NWAC forecaster field report from Bootjack Rock for more details on conditions from Monday.

A frozen surface crust combined with recent avalanches cycles from early January gives us confidence that the snowpack has become generally stable. The upper snowpack contains alternating layers of firm crusts, weak wet snow, and strong rounded grains. Right now there aren’t any specific layers we’re tracking and any unstable snow should be limited..