Loose Wet
- Alpin
- Limite forestière
- Sous la limite forestière
- Probabilité
- Possible
- Taille
- 1–1.5
Pay attention to the changing snow conditions as you travel. The snow may start out firm and frozen this morning, but could become unsupportable, wet, and mushy on sunny slopes as the day warms up. If the snow starts to feel wet or unsupportable, it's time to move away from avalanche terrain. Sinking into boot-top-deep wet snow, roller balls, and pinwheels can also indicate that larger, wet, loose avalanches may soon occur.
Last night's warmer temperatures mean that the refreeze had to rely more on heat escaping from the snow into the clear sky rather than cold temperatures combined with radiational cooling. As a result, less refreezing likely occurred. Today, strong March sun, significantly warmer weather, and much less wind will provide good melting conditions, and may allow a deeper layer of wet snow to form on some slopes. The most wet snow will form on the sunniest slopes, and avalanches of wet loose snow may become possible in these areas as the day warms up. Most of these should remain small since the snowpack has already undergone many melt-freeze cycles and has a thick refreeze crust left over from the last few days of colder weather. Still, some larger ones might occur on long, steep slopes where a wet loose avalanche could entrain more snow as it moves downhill.