It's going to be a beautiful day in the mountains with sunny skies, light NW winds, and high temps creeping up to right around freezing at 10,000'. On Sunday, we'll see increasing clouds and breezy SW winds ahead of a storm system that will track through to the north. A similar system moves through around Wed though we may see a little better chance for snow from that one. Long range models show a progressive storm pattern through the end of the month so let's hope some of it comes our way.
Snowpack
Dangerous avalanche conditions exist in all zones throughout Utah, and most of Colorado. This is due to a buried persistent weak layer of loose, sugary, faceted snow that formed near the snow surface during the extended dry period of Jan-Feb. This faceted weak layer now sits beneath a slab up to 2' deep. In my travels on the Manti-Skyline yesterday with forecaster Brett Kobernik, we met a party of snowmobilers who had remotely triggered a very large avalanche from below the slope. This was after we felt we were seeing some improvement in the stability over there. These are unusual conditions for this time of year. Time heals all wounds but I'm afraid this one is taking awhile, and the likelihood for triggering an avalanche on a steep, northerly facing slope remains very real.
No recent avalanches have been reported from the Abajo Mountains.