Steady ridgeline winds are forecast for the day, which will blow the low density snow into sensitive drifts or wind slabs. With faster wind speeds, these drifts will be more widespread than yesterday. Mountain terrain channels the wind in odd ways, so look for these soft to medium, rounded wind slabs or drifts on a variety of aspects and elevations. They will be on the lee sides of ridge crests and around terrain features, like gully walls, sub ridges and down into open bowls at both the mid and upper elevations. Lingering drifts from yesterday’s strange southeasterly winds hidden beneath the snow.

Out of the wind affected terrain, new snow sluffs and a few cracky soft slabs can be triggered on steep slopes of all aspects. Consequences are important - even a small sluff can be serious if it takes you into trees, off a cliff or for a long ride.

The small storms are sneaking up on us - in the last week, mid elevations in the Provo area mountains have had up to a foot of snow. In the central Wasatch mountains, there have been 2 skier triggered slides in the last 4 days breaking near ground on the weak, sugary faceted snow. Both were on slopes with old faceted October snow near the ground and that had a shallow snowpack because they avalanched already this winter (know as “repeaters”.

The old faceted, sugary October snow layer is most widespread on upper elevations northwest, north, northeast and easterly facing terrain. Here is an excellent observation from the Provo area mountains.

Here is what the shallow, Provo area snowpack looked like on Dec 23rd, mostly weak and sugary, with a thin wind slab on top. There is now another 7" of new snow on top.