Avalanche forecast

Northwest Inland

Dec 7 – 8, 2015Avalanche Canada
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Avalanche danger

Wed
Thu
Alpine
No rating
Treeline
No rating
Below
No rating
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Highlights

The snow load on a layer of buried surface hoar may be reaching the threshold for surprisingly large avalanches, especially at tree-line.

Avalanche problems

  • Storm Slabs

    • Alpine
    • Treeline
    • Below treeline
    Likelihood
    Likely
    Size
    2–5
    A layer of surface hoar lies under the recent storm snow that could increase both it's likelihood of triggering and the size of any resulting avalanches.

Confidence

Low - Due to the number of field observations

Weather Forecast

A series of powerful storms are going to wallop the coast over the coming days bringing heavy precipitation and strong winds that should spill over into the inland regions.  Tuesday should see snowfall accumulations of between 5 and 15 cm.  With another 10cm expected by Friday.  Winds will be moderate to strong from the southwest and freezing levels should stay below 1000m.

Avalanche Summary

It sounds like there were touchy conditions out there over the weekend.   Reports of some large skier triggered and skier controlled avalanches from tree-line suggest that the load on the recently buried surface hoar is reaching critical levels.

Snowpack Summary

New snow is falling on a variety of old surfaces including a crust at lower elevations and south facing slopes, or facets and surface hoar on cooler shaded features.  The distribution of surface hoar is definitely our biggest knowledge gap.  Bellow this we're still dealing with a thin early season snowpack.

Regions covered