Erik Fullmer photo yesterday, looking south toward the Cascade Ridgeline
Skies are mostly cloudy-trending overcast ahead of the next storm. As of 6AM, temperatures are dramatically warmer - even 20-25°F warmer than 24 hours ago and are in the low to mid-40s! Winds are moderate to strong out of the southwest.
The next storm - a weakening atmospheric river event - is on the doorstep. There is a fair bit of uncertainty on how far south the firehose points (will it make it as far south as the Provo mountains?) and a fair bit of uncertainty with how much snow and water arrives. But it's fair to say that any precipitation will fall as rain up to 8-8500' this afternoon and tonight with slowly dropping freezing levels through tomorrow. We may see 3-6" of heavy dense snow by Saturday afternoon at best. What I can promise is strong westerly winds through the weekend and off and on snowfall through next week. The avalanche conditions will be changing with the weather.
Forecasters Bo Torrey and Trent Meisenheimer took the new Ski-Doo (thanks Ski-Doo!) sleds up Snake Creek up to the Ant Knolls yesterday and found surprisingly supportable riding conditions and generally Low avalanche danger. Their report can be found HERE>
Erik Fullmer traveled around the north fork yesterday and his excellent report is HERE
The last reported avalanches were on December 7th with the last significant storm. Bo and Trent did find evidence of more old avalanche activity, including some larger wet avalanches during last weekend's warm-up.
