Quick report
- Red Flags
- Heavy Snowfall, Wind Loading, Cracking, Poor Snowpack Structure
- Red Flags Comment
- <p>Lots of red flags out there today and I am sure there will be even more moving forward. We have a shallow weak snow pack right now that, with any luck, will see another 12" of snow by mid week. This is setting us up for an active natural avalanche cycle with the expected wind loading onto our upside down layer cake of a snow pack. I would expect to find touchy conditions on steep slopes for the foreseeable future.</p>
Snowpack
- Instability Comment
- <p>Our meager snow pack has had ample time to facet during the high pressure and cold temps of the past few weeks. Unfortunately this will be a common theme moving forward with persistent weak layer conditions.</p> <p>The dense new snow is going to test the old weak snow over the next couple of days. With high winds predicted for Tuesday expect this new snow to move around and load leeward slope adding wind slabs to our list of avalanche concerns.</p>
The snow that we have received in the mountains since yesterday is more dense than you would expect for this time of year, but we'll take what we can get! 8-10" of dense new snow is now sitting on top of sugary old snow, creating a prime conditions for avalanche activity on steeper slopes. We experienced some cracking in soft wind slabs along laurel highway but I was surprised to not hear or feel any large collapses, something you would expect to find with our current snow pack. However the upside conditions were very apparent while skiing, making for some slightly punchy conditions at times. Around 3:00 as we left the parking lot it was still snowing at a good rate so I would expect things to become more unsettled as more weight is added to our current snow pack. Coverage is still pretty thin out there so ski with cautions as there are plenty of season ending hazards lurking just out of sight.