Forecast: Salt Lake Area Mountains - Utah Avalanche Center

Special Announcements

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Weather and Snow

Skies are clear. Overnight lows are in the upper 30s to mid-40s. A weak storm passing to the north has elevated the winds and hourly averages are 15-20 mph from the west-northwest and about twice that along the highest peaks and ridgelines.

For today, we'll have partly cloudy skies, moderate winds from the west-northwest and daytime highs again reaching into upper 40s and 50s. A dry cold front crashes through for a brief reprieve on Thursday, but temps rebound for the weekend. There are hints of a more active pattern for next week, but we've heard that sales pitch before.

Call it mid-March madness. Here are the temps from the Mill D North snotel site in mid-BCC at roughly 9000'. You can see the cold front last Saturday March 14th with the sharp dip in temps, but we're seeing extreme temperatures more akin to late May or early June.

This station had 14" of snow-water-equivalent on the morning of March 17th, but in the past week, the water draining out of the snowpack had dropped that amount to about half that (7.4" SWE).

I am amazed to note that two winter extremes have occurred within just a few years, with Winter 22/23 boasting almost 1000" of snowfall in upper LCC.

Recent Avalanches

There were a few significant wet avalanches reported over this weekend:

- High Ivory in Cardiff Fork - a glide avalanche over 3 feet deep and several hundred feet wide, running on rock slabs (photo below)

- Long John Silver in White Pine - a long-running wet loose avalanche (photo by Logan Cookler)

- Control work at resorts using explosives triggered large wet slab avalanches that ran on facets above crusts that formed over the holidays (the CERC layer).

Glide avalanche on High Ivory (photo Andrew Hamlin)

Type

Location

Likelihood

Size

Description

There are three concerns for wet snow avalanches:

1. Wet Loose - This will be the most common concern, with the possibility for natural and human-triggered avalanches involving wet snow near the surface. These may be long-running and gouge down into the snow pack. These avalanches are especially dangerous in steep terrain or above terrain traps such as steep-sided gullies where escaping the flow is difficult.

2. Wet Slabs - As meltwater moves deeper into the snowpack, it can pool on buried crusts or weak layers, weakening the structure and allowing avalanches to break deeper and wider. These are larger and more destructive avalanches and may occur naturally, possibly failing down around crusts that formed over the holidays in late December.

3. Glide Avalanches - These avalanches occur when the entire snowpack slowly slides on the ground, typically over smooth rock slabs or grassy slopes. They are nearly impossible to predict and are almost always natural, such as the avalanche on High Ivory over the weekend. Avoid traveling on or beneath slopes with visible glide cracks or known glide activity, such as Broads Fork, Stairs Gulch, and Mill B South.

Long-running wet-loose avalanche in White Pine Canyon over this weekend (photo Logan Cookler).

General Announcements

This information does not apply to developed ski areas or highways where avalanche control is normally done. This forecast is from the U.S.D.A. Forest Service, which is solely responsible for its content. This forecast describes general avalanche conditions and local variations always occur.

Observations and Avalanches

Backcountry Emergency Procedures