Hochschwab Mountains

Few danger zones in shady high altitude areas: moderate avalanche danger

Few danger zones in shady high altitude areas: moderate avalanche danger

Above the timberline, moderate avalanche danger prevails, below that altitude danger is low. In few avalanche prone locations, even low additional loading can trigger a small slab avalanche. The danger zones are the freshly generated snowdrift accumulations near ridgelines, behind abrupt discontinuities in the terrain and at the entry points into gullies and bowls. Shady zones need to be assessed especially critically: the bonding of the drifts to the snowbase is poor! Avalanche prone locations are easily recognized to the practiced eye (fresh drifts).

The snowpack fundament is stable by and large due to the shifting phases of warm and cold. Only in shady high alpine zones is there a persistent weak layer. On top of that on Friday night, up to 20 cm of cold snowfall will be deposited which will then be transported, initially onto east-facing slopes, later also onto north-facing slopes. The drifts will bond relatively well with the frequently moist fundament to start with, only at elevated altitudes will be bonding be poor on shady slopes. Inside the fresh snowdrift accumulations, weak layers are found in all aspects which due to the small amounts of fresh snow will lead only to small-sized slab avalanches.

On Friday night, temperatures will drop another notch, a bit of snowfall amid strong NW winds is expected. On Saturday morning, heavy cloud, snowfall will continue in some places. Temperatures at 2000 m: -10 degrees. Towards evening, the clouds will disperse, the winds slacken off. Sunday will being brilliantly blue skies, moderate-strength southerly winds, slowly rising temperatures.

On Sunday the snowdrift problem will remain unchanged, but solar radiation could cause additional small-sized naturally triggered avalanches.