Loose Wet
- Alpin
- Limite forestière
- Sous la limite forestière
- Probabilité
- Unlikely
- Taille
- 1
Despite overnight temperatures above freezing, the wet snow that formed yesterday should have all refrozen last night since clear skies allowed the snowpack to radiate heat out into space. This melt-freeze cycle represents the latest in a long series of melt-freeze cycles that have occurred this winter. The repeated melt-freeze cycles mean that any free water that does form in the snowpack can easily drain out of the snow. This well established drainage combined with last night's solid refreeze mean that significant wet snow instabilities remain unlikely today. The lack of snow cover on almost all of the SE-S-SW-W aspects will also limit the formation of troublesome wet snow instabilities since those aspects represent the slopes where the most wet snow typically forms. Some minor roller balls or pinwheels may form on the E and ENE aspects today, and if widespread cloud cover materializes, those minor wet snow instabilities may extend to the NE, N, and NW aspects as well. Any wet snow instabilities that do form today should remain small and not involve enough snow to bury a person, but they could knock a person off balance or push someone off course. In areas near cliffs, rocks, other exposed hazards, or terrain traps these small inconvenient issues could pose more serious problems.