Avalanche danger will increase with daytime warming, and spike quickly if it starts to rain mid-day.
Start your day early, and be ready to scale back your exposure as soon as the surface crust breaks down.
New snow, moderate SW winds, and mild temps are the perfect combination for forming fresh wind slabs in the alpine. Expect to find potentially reactive slabs if you can get to higher elevations.
Warm temps and rain have weakened the low elevation snowpack. Cool temps in the morning will temporarily pause this problem, but daytime warming will reignite this issue each day.
Wet slabs have been failing in the upper snowpack, as well as on the deeply buried Dec. 1st layer.
Full depth glide avalanches have been occurring recently as well.
A cold front Weds brings light precip followed by cooling temps
Tonight: Increasing cloud. Alpine Low -3*C, Freezing level (FZL) 800m
Wed: Scattered flurries/rain showers (5-10cm/mm), High -2*C, FZL 2000m, light SW ridgetop winds
Thur: Isolated flurries, Low -10*C, High -7*C, FZL 1200m, moderate W wind
Fri: Mainly cloudy, Low -9*C, High -5*C, FZL 1500m
Diurnal temp swings control the upper snowpack - fast travel on a crust in the AM, sticky wet snow in the PM (scale back terrain use for the latter). Recent slab avalanches have failed in the upper snowpack, near the base on the the Dec. 1st crust/facet combo, and on the ground. On high N aspects, 20cm of dry snow has formed pockets of slab.
Daytime warming Tuesday triggered a natural cycle of large to very large avalanches, and heli bombing also produced several size 2-3 results.
Rain Monday triggered a large-very large natural cycle, and allowed for good artillery control results (up to size 3.5).
Glide cracks have been reactive recently, avoid exposure to these unpredictable features.
