First, let's say that there is a lot of uncertainty here. We are dealing with an unusually cranky snowpack for so late in the season and now we're subjecting it to sustained, blistering heat and record-breaking temperatures. The melt-freeze cycle in general provides a stabilizing influence on the snowpack, but once you lose the "freeze" part of the cycle, frightful things begin to happen, particularly when the sun is beating down on the mountains during the day and you have a conditionally unstable, layered, "cranky" snowpack. The melt-water now starts to potentially pool along structural interfaces, dissolve the bonds holding the snow together, and, well, initiate avalanches.

A colleague of ours in Montana, Erich Peitzsch, in researching wet slab avalanches, wrote, "The funny business, (as the avalanche forecasters/researchers) Reardon and Lundy describe it, is usually a section of coarser grains underlying finer grains (i.e., facets under rounds). This potential weak layer is able to support the load above it, but once water enters the equation, funny things begin to happen which, again, are not well understood."

Remember that wet avalanche debris sets up immediately like concrete and difficult to excavate an avalanche victim. Glide avalanches are large and full depth and rarely survivable.

Travel Advice: Avoid steep terrain, particularly steep rocky terrain. Collapsing or punchy snow conditions are potential warning signs.

You can still trigger warm and damp soft slab avalanches 1-3' deep on our Jan/Feb PWL drought layer of facets, notably on mid-to upper elevation north to northeast facing slopes. You may also trigger these from a distance or from below. Certainly the slab and weak layer is changing with the heat, but the structure is still poor and conditionally unstable.