It's time to be head's up! Strong winds, warm temps and as much as 25cm of snow expected Tuesday. Avalanche hazard is trending to HIGH.
Lots of snow for transport, strong SW winds and mild temps are the perfect mix for fresh wind slab formation. By Tuesday afternoon this process was underway at Treeline, and slabs will become increasing sensitive to triggering.
Tuesday will be cloudy with temperatures between -2 and -5 and strong SW winds. The big unknown is the snowfall amounts, with forecasts ranging from 10 to 25cm. Let's hope it's 25cm!
Visibility was somewhat limited today, but numerous loose dry up to size 1.5 were observed in Alpine and Treeline terrain on all aspects. Also, several wind slabs were observed up to size 2.5 in Alpine terrain on N, E and S aspects. These slabs appear to be 50 to 60cm deep on average.
Another 30cm of new snow fell in the last 24 hours, bringing recent storm snow totals to between 60 and 70cm. So far this snow remains low density at lower elevations, but today at 2500m forecasters observed a change starting. The winds were moderate to strong from the SW and were quickly forming new surface wind slabs with some isolated cracking and whumpfing at ridge-crest. In addition, snowpack tests today indicate that all the recent storm snow is failing on the old wind slab surface down 60cm. Test results were variable ranging from very easy to moderate. Once the surface snow gains a bit more density, these new slabs will be quite sensitive to triggering.
