It's 31°F this morning at the 8400' Tony Grove Snotel, and there is 91 inches of total snow at the site with 129% of normal Snow Water Equivalent. It's 27°F at the 9700' CSI Logan Peak weather station, and southwest winds are currently blowing around 24 mph.
About a foot-and-a-half of new snow fell at upper elevations in the Logan Zone on Wednesday and Thursday, but warm temperatures in the past couple days got to the powder, even up high. Warming daytime temperatures, high angled sun, and potential green-housing will cause increasing danger of loose wet avalanches in steep mid and upper elevation terrain. Avalanches are unlikely on lower elevation slopes since only a few inches of new snow accumulated this week, and the remaining underlying old snow is solidly refrozen.
A series of weather disturbance will maintain unsettled conditions across the region through early next week, while temperatures remain near seasonal averages.
Snow showers are likely this afternoon, and some thunder is also possible. Skies will be partly sunny, with 8500' high temperatures around 46°F and 8 mph west-southwest wind. It will be mostly clear tonight, with a low temperature around 26°F and 5 to 7 mph northwest wind. It will be sunny and warm tomorrow, with high temperatures around 50°F, and light west-northwest winds.
We triggered some small loose avalanches of moist new snow in steep north facing terrain and noticed a few fresh natural wet loose avalanches on very steep sunny slopes in the White Pine Canyon area Friday afternoon.
Observers report triggering a few 12" to 16" deep soft slab avalanches of wind drifted snow Thursday on steep upper elevation slopes facing north, northeast, and east. The soft avalanches on very steep slopes were expected, slow moving, and manageable, and nobody got caught.
An unintentionally triggered soft wind slab in Rock Bowl, on an east facing slope at about 9200'. The 15" deep, 200+' wide avalanche was fairly slow moving and allowed the rider to escape.
