Quick report
- Red Flags
- Heavy Snowfall
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Sluffing in the storm snow on steeper aspects during periods of high PI in the afternoon.</p>
Will keep it simple, because today, it was. Forecast verified with periods of heavy snowfall by late morning and throughout the afternoon. A lot of things went right with this storm:
- old snow surface had frozen, so no wet issues to be concerned about;
- storm snow bonded well to the old snow surface;
- storm came in rightside up (denser snow followed by increasingly lighter snow)
- no instabilities within the storm snow;
- winds decreased as the snowfall increased, minimizing wind drifts.
Ski cuts very effective at managing these sorts of conditions as any avalanche issues you are going to encounter are right near the surface.
For Sunday, issues will be:
- any lingering instabilities within storm snow that fell overnight;
- possible warming in the morning;
- instability snow showers are expected during the afternoon, and a brief spike in the avalanche danger can be possible during any periods of high PI.
Snowpack
20-30 cms new storm snow by the time we were exiting at 4:30 pm. Much of this came in on a W/SW flow and Cardiff/mid-BCC can do well in this setup.