Southeast Mountains

Our friend, the snowpack, has seen a break in loading from both wind and snow. As the persistent slab avalanche problem becomes more stubborn to human triggering, you may not observe early warnings such as collapsing or shooting cracks and you may have to find just the right spot to trigger the avalanche problem. Those more likely areas to trigger an avalanche would be in areas with shallower overall snowpack depths, or somewhere the average snow depth decrease near rock outcrops and other general trigger points. Maybe it takes the 3rd person or the 6th person on a slope to, unfortunately, find the right trigger point. Or maybe your buddy riding the short-track snowmobile trenches deeply into the weak layer and collapses the snowpack. Either way, if you find that right trigger point the resulting avalanche could break several feet deep, propagate much wider than expected, or even be triggered from a lower angled slope connected to a steeper slope. These are dangerous potential avalanches. A wise man once told me, "surfing a head-high wave is cool, surfing a head-high avalanche is not cool." 

Calm wind and no notable snowfall yesterday, likely lead to no natural avalanches for the first day in over a week. Consistent snowfall and/or wind-loading events in February have kept continued avalanche activity and dangerous avalanche conditions in the front lines of each forecast. As the slabs above buried weak layers grow, we've seen the potential avalanche size become scary large. It's more difficult for the weight of a human to affect weak layers below thick slabs. So you may have noticed a transitioning message about trigger points and/or general shallower snowpack areas as the most likely spots to trigger the avalanche problem. 

Northerly to westerly winds are forecasted to begin increasing later this afternoon and stay elevated as we head into the weekend. The resulting wind-loading will keep the avalanche danger elevated near and above treeline. Natural avalanche activity will remain possible during this time.

The below treeline avalanche danger is MODERATE in the NW Mountains and remains CONSIDERABLE in the SE Mountains. This is due to the average slab depth over the buried persistent weak layers for each of those forecast areas. Slabs on average are thicker in the NW Mountains and thinner in the SE Mountains. Those thinner slabs are expected to remain more reactive to the weight of a human for a longer period of time. Where you find a total snowpack height near or below 120cm's the persistent slab avalanche problem is expected to be more reactive to human triggering. Where you find a total snowpack height near and above 170cm's the same avalanche problem is expected to be more stubborn to human triggering. Of course, there is a gray area between those numbers, and you could also find below-average snowpack depths in the NW Mountains or above-average snowpack depths in the SE Mountains. Another factor that will lead to abnormal snowpack depths is past avalanche activity.