Forecaster Blogs
Blog: Utah Avalanche Center Season Summary 2012-2013 -
05/11/2013 -
Drew Hardesty
What follows will be a very personal account of the 2012/2013 winter season. Read on and you'll understand.
From my April 10th 2013 avalanche advisory...
While an east wind blows
Friend looks cancer in the eye
Magnolia tree blooms
I often like to say that nothing good comes of an east wind...but sometimes there are good things that are coincident with it. Just ask the old man in the haiku.
One friend – a mentor – is cleared of cancer the day before…the following day a good friend, a colleague, a husband and father dies in an avalanche. From my advisory just after the accident -
My...
Blog: Why partnerships are vital to our rural avalanche forecast programs -
04/15/2013 -
Craig Gordon/Trent Meisenheimer
Access to remote regions for our snowmobile specific forecasts has always been a challenging proposition, but since 2000, the Utah Snowmobile Association helped us form critical relationships with sled dealers and manufacturers. Since then, Tri-City Performance, Wellers Recreation, and Big Pine Sports in conjunction with Polaris, BRP/Ski-Doo, and Arctic Cat respectively, donate loaner sleds to the Utah Avalanche Center(UAC) each winter. This extremely generous partnership allows us to see more terrain, issue more accurate forecasts, and ultimately saves more riders lives.
The loaner program...
Blog: Steepness -
03/27/2013 -
Toby Weed
Recent avalanche accidents in Utah highlight slope steepness as a primary contributing terrain factor and illustrate what seems an obvious truth, that the steeper the slope, the greater the danger. But, not only are more and more people venturing into the backcountry these days in search of untracked powder, but people are apparently also venturing onto steeper and steeper slopes for various reasons. Slope steepness might be considered more of a "human factor" issue in many avalanche accidents than that of mistakes made in "terrain assessment."
Jill Fredston and Doug Fesler...
Blog: Avalanche Route Ratings -
03/27/2013 -
Hardesty
I'd like to (re) introduce our Avalanche Route Ratings for Selected Touring Routes in the Wasatch Range
You know the old saying..."If I had a dollar for everytime...." For years we fielded calls and emails from outta towners to scout groups to beginners - "The danger's Considerable - where can I go that's safe?" And we'd tell them here or there depending on what was going on. So we set upon a project to outline 30 routes in the central Wasatch and rate them based upon static parameters (as you'll soon find out). It was shelved for a number of years but now resurrected. My initial...
Blog: Storm analysis: March 20-25, 2013 -
03/26/2013 -
Kobernik
Unfortunately, the cold powder from the last storm is a thing of the past but what a treat that storm was!! I'd like to take a look back at how things shook out from my perspective.
Wednesday, March 20:
4 to 5" of new snow in 24 hours. Mild temperatures to start with a cooling trend.
The storm was just starting to get going mid day and produced the high end of the forecast amounts for the day in the upper elevations. Temperatures were mild with the rain/snow line pushing 8000 feet. It was difficult to identify just how the new snow was bonding in areas where it hadn't stacked up a...
Blog: Dont Confuse Me With the Facts (My Minds Made Up) -
03/24/2013 -
Hardesty
During the Watergate Hearings in August 1974, the pro-Nixon Representative from Indiana, Earl Landgrebe (in)famously retorted "Don't confuse me with the facts, my mind's made up." He went on to say "I'm going to stick with my President even if he and I have to be taken out of this building and shot." The next day Nixon resigned...and a few months later Landgrebe was voted out of office. Beats a lynching or a firing squad I suppose. (Apologies for the lack of apostrophes in the title - the Drupal system didn't 'like' them so much)
As an avalanche forecaster, I've always felt more...
Blog: Wet Snow Avalanches -
03/13/2013 -
Evelyn
Wet Avalanches
When it comes to wet snow avalanches, a lot of good, but general, simplifications are thrown around, such as watch out for the first warm day, rain on cold snow, 3 non-freezing nights lead to wet slab avalanches, etc. It’s certainly a lot more complicated, but less studied than dry snow avalanches.
Blog: Why Your Donations Count -
03/13/2013 -
Paul Diegel
The Utah Avalanche Center is a partnership between the Forest Service and the non-profit Friends of the Utah Avalanche Center. A little over a third of the money needed to run the UAC comes from the Forest Service, the State of Utah, and Salt Lake County. The rest comes from events, donations, grants, sponsorships, and classes. Ski Utah and the Utah resorts provide in-kind support and donate lift tickets for us to sell. Snowbird donates office space and Black Diamond sponsors the Fall Fundraising party. Why should this matter to you?
If it weren’t for donations and event support from...
Blog: The Tiny House Tour visits Utah and the UAC -
03/7/2013 -
Tiny House video featuring Trent Meisenheimer
The Tiny House Tour is sponsored by Outdoor Research. They visited the Wasatch Range and spent time with our own Trent Meisenheimer touring in the backcountry and learning about avalanches. Here is their very cool video they produced. Enjoy:
Here are a few thoughts from the crew of the Tiny House Tour:
"Every moment in the mountains lends an opportunity to learn. A lifetime education awaits those willing to explore, watch, and listen. And sometimes we meet purveyors of the knowledge, people who have made it their intention to understand the intricacies of the snow, and share what they've...
Blog: Avalanche Airbag Effectiveness - Something Closer to the Truth -
03/4/2013 -
Bruce Tremper
This winter I noticed a magazine advertisement for an avalanche airbag pack that claimed “A 97 percent success rate in real world conditions.” What the advertisement didn’t mention was that people caught WITHOUT an avalanche airbag have an 80 - 90 percent success rate. In other words, most people caught in an avalanche will get a cheap lesson; they will either escape off the slab, grab a tree, dig into the bed surface, ride on top of the debris, it will be a small avalanche that wouldn’t burry them anyway, they could be saved by a beacon recovery or they could just get lucky. Most...