New snow and wind will create fresh slabs that likely sit atop various weak grains combined with crusts in the upper snowpack.
New snow and wind will build firm wind slabs that likely sit atop a variety of weak surfaces and hard crusts. If triggered wind slabs could step down to buried weak layers in the upper snowpack.
A couple of skier-triggered size 1 and 1.5 slab avalanches have been reported this week in the Terrace area. These avalanches occurred on north-facing terrain at treeline and above, failing on a facet/crust combination down roughly 20 to 30 cm from the surface.
Snowfall is burying predominantly faceted and wind-affected surfaces. New snow may have buried surface hoar in wind-sheltered terrain and a sun crust on south-facing slopes.
A couple of crusts exist in the upper snowpack that have proven to be problematic sliding surfaces over the last couple of weeks.
Below, the mid and lower snowpack is generally well-bonded and strong.
Thursday Night
Cloudy with 5 to 15 cm of snow. 60 to 80 km/h southwest ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -5 °C.
Friday
Cloudy with 5 to 20 cm of snow. 60 to 80 km/h west ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -7 °C.
Saturday
Cloudy with 5 to 10 cm of snow. 50 to 70 km/h southwest ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -5 °C.
Sunday
Cloudy with 0 to 10 cm of snow. 20 to 40 km/h northwest ridgetop wind. Treeline temperature -10 °C.
More details can be found in the Mountain Weather Forecast.
