Quick report
- Red Flags
- Recent Avalanches, Heavy Snowfall, Wind Loading, Rapid Warming
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Recent explosive and natural activity avalanche activity within the last few days during the most recent storm cycle. The rapid warming on the new snow was my biggest concern. </p>
Today was a transition day from a lot of recent storm snow (66.5/3.59 as measured at the Alta Collins Study Plot) to a springtime snowpack. The issue we have is that all this new snow has not had any time to melt or create any sort of plumbing to allow melt water through. This will take time and the direct sun today is a concern and will create rising avalanche hazard as the snowpack transitions. We have had so much snow (Alta reports 877" for the season) and the Alta Guard reported 179" snow/ 16.54" SWE for the month of March. Now I haven't done the calculations- but I know we have only seen momentary glimpses of sun for the last month and in those moments of sun we the snow surface may have formed slight crusts at different intervals within the snowpack. These crusts may have faceted grains around them and this new snow from last week need's some time to settle out.
This has been a season for the record books and because of this there is a high level of uncertainty with what will happen as we warm up this spring. What I can tell you is that we have had a lot of snow and it needs to go somewhere.
Photo 1- Upper LCC snowcover
Photo 2- loose-dry roller balls on north facing slopes at 9800'
Photo 3- wind sculpting on Patsy Marley
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>The new snow is still settling into it's place and I would give steep terrain a chance to settle out before travelling in steep avalanche terrain. </p> <p>The wet snow issue will ebb and flow with temperature changes for a few days. Even though we have not seen a lot of sun this season it is still Springtime and that spring sun is warm. The<a href="https://www.weather.gov/wrh/timeseries?site=IFF&hourly=true"> percent of solar </a>at Cardiff is as high as I have seen it all season. </p>
The Alta Collins Study plot had reported 66.5" of snow with 3.59" of water for this most recent storm. The snow surface was dry powder on north facing terrain and damp powder on west-south-east aspects.
Roller balls in Grizzly Cup (this photo taken around 100pm) prior to this avalanche.