Northwest Inland

Fair - Due to limited field observations

Sunday should be a beautiful day in the mountains as an outbreak of cold, dry Arctic Air takes hold of the region. Expect alpine winds out of the N, NE with lower elevation winds out of the E. Temperatures dip down to -26 overnight with a daytime high around -10. This pattern looks to persist through Tuesday evening.

There have been no avalanches observations reported from the region.

There is about 235 cm at 1500 metres.Heavy rain occurred last weekend up to about 1000 metres. Cooling since the storm has created a rain crust up to about 1200 metres. Above that, high winds redistributed the storm snow into wind slabs on lee and cross-loaded features. Since then, the region has received only dribs and drabs of new snow, and I suspect that last weekend's wind slab has gained considerable strength. I would expect soft slabs developing at treeline and in the alpine from the light accumulations throughout the week.There is an old rain crust that is buried down about a metre that is knife hard and showing old facets above and below. The snowpack is well settled below the rain crust down to the ground. The snowpack in the alpine is highly variable.Strong winds with almost every storm this winter have scoured ridges and knolls down to bare ground, and exposed boulders on some slopes.