A backcountry closure is in place in Little Cottonwood Canyon with an expected reopening by 8am this morning. UDOT Little Cottonwood requests backcountry travelers to avoid Superior to Cardiff this morning.
Join the Utah Avalanche Center and the Division of Outdoor Recreation to celebrate the Fourth Annual Avalanche Awareness week, from December 4 - December 11. Click
HERE to view the full list of events for the week.
As of 5am, it's still snowing hard with 6-10" of snow overnight and storm totals since yesterday of 10-15". It's cold smoke with densities of 5-6%. Winds remain gusty out of the west northwest with hourly averages of 20-25mph with gusts to 40mph. The highest elevation anemometers have hourly averages of 35mph with gusts to 50. Gusts at those elevations reached toward 70mph in the darkest hours of the night. Mountain temperatures have, of course, plummeted to the single digits. Wind chill at 11,000' is -32°F.
For today, I expect heavy snowfall through the morning hours, drying out by early afternoon. Winds will blow 25-30mph but lose steam in the afternoon. Temperatures will remain in the single digits.
Skiing and riding conditions will be much improved but dangerous in steep terrain. Stick to known low angle slopes with nothing steep overhead.
We'll start to dry out tonight and tomorrow as the flow backs to the southwest and increases Wednesday/Wednesday night ahead of another storm Thursday night into Friday. Another storm is expected late weekend into early next week.
From Ogden to the central Wasatch to the Provo mountains, we have received several excellent observations. You can find them
HERE. Please keep these reports coming.
Along the Patsy Marley ridgeline in upper LCC yesterday afternoon, a skier intentionally triggered a 12-18" deep soft slab of wind drifted snow that failed on our November drought layer of weak faceted snow. This was on an ENE facing slope at 10,300'. The slope was not steep enough to avalanche, but it did give a hint of things to come.
(photo: Bo Torrey)
