Quick report
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Rapid Warming
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Another red flag is rain on snow event to at least 9500'.</p>
Afternoon tour up 10,420'. Enjoyed rain to about 9500' where it slowly transitioned to all-snow at 10,000'
Am currently thinking this storm may have more of an affect at the mid elevations:
- low elevations have lost a lot of snow from recent warmth, wind, and today's rain.
- upper elevations (> 9500', especially closer to 10,000') have generally solid snowpack, certainly in the Cottonwoods. Where I was digging today on 10,420' in Big Cottonwood Canyon stations reported about 1" of water. Snowpack was not reactive to this load with ECTX in a few pits.
Mid elevations (8 - 9500') have enough snow to create larger avalanches, and the snow was damp or wet well down within the snowpack.
Photos showing affects of recent warmth, wind, and rain and how it has taken a toll on low and mid elevation slopes, especially those with a southerly aspect.
Video of conditions at 9000' in Big Cottonwood Canyon. (First time I've skied with rain gear in a long while.)
Thanks for being with me today Selina; every step of the way.
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Below about 9500' very easy to get push-a-lanches in the wet snow at the surface. Saw natural avalanches in steep chutes off of Storm Mountain. These were mostly class 1 and class 2 slides that ran at most an estimated few hundred feet.</p> <p>There may be enough of a load of water to tip the scales and make deep slabs reactive by Friday. These would be in areas outside of the upper Cottonwoods where there is a thinner snowpack (i.e. Park City ridgeline), steep rocky terrain, as well as slopes that have already slid.</p>
8500' and below snow surface is slush and wet to the ground where I was looking. Water was running out of the bottom of the snowbanks on the side of the road.
> Snow surface begins to improve above 9000 with top 20 to 30 cms (8 to 12") of snow at the surface damp, with dry snow underneath.
> At 9500' top 20 cms (8") is damp with dry snow underneath.
> Above 10,000' top 5 to 10 cms (2 to 4") is damp with dry snow underneath.