Quick report
- Cracking
- Observed
- Collapsing
- Observed
I observed a handful of large recent avalanches. Several of these appeared to have failed within the previous 48 hours. I triggered a number of collapses at lower and middle elevations, and a few booming rumblers at upper elevation. One of these huge upper elevation collapses knocked cornices off the nearby ridgeline and triggered loose snow avalanches below. The persistent slab problem is frightening and gives plenty of obvious signs of instability. There is no better sign that avalanches are possible than seeing large natural avalanches! Large persistent slab avalanches are the primary avalanche concern. Plenty of signs of instability, including recent large natural avalanches (the best sign of instability!). I triggered a number of collapses at lower and middle elevations, and a few booming rumblers at upper elevation. One of these huge upper elevation collapses knocked cornices off the nearby ridgeline.
Weather
Bluebird until mid morning, then isolated scrappy low clouds forming, particularly over the Sawtooths, but not significantly limiting solar input until early/mid afternoon. Winds were calm until afternoon, then light out of the W.
Snowpack
Enough sun to initiate some dry loose on steep slopes and put a crust on steeper SSE-S-SSW, cloud cover and increasing wind speed likely limited melting on SSW-SW-W, but some of these slopes took a crust the day before. The crusts that are forming would make for great weak layers, we will see how the weather plays out over the next week.
Avalanche
- Size
- D2.5
- Count
- 10
- Aspect
- NW
- Trigger
- N
- Elevation
- 9200 ft
In addition to these reported slides, I could see some other large to very large avalanches in the Smokys that appeared to be pretty fresh...