With soft snow available for transport and elevated winds accompanying this front, you'll likely find new and developing slabs of wind-drifted snow at all mid and upper elevations. The slabs will be most pronounced on lee-ward facing slopes, but elevated can load any aspect as winds swirl and change direction as they pass through the mountains, this is known as cross-loading

As the winds continue to blow, these slabs will become firmer and more cohesive. This can allow you to travel out farther onto the slope before it breaks, and can fail larger and wider than expected.

Look for blowing and drifting snow and avoid any slopes with fresh deposits of wind-drifted snow. Today is not the day to mess with any steep slope, greater than 30°, that the wind has loaded.

Cornices: We have gotten a few reports of natural cornice fall. Cornices are currently large and only continue to grow in the backcountry. With today's new snow and high winds, we will continue to see more cornices breaking naturally. Give cornices, and the edges of cornices a wide berth as they often break farther back than expected. Limit your exposure to slopes below cornices. A cornice fall could trigger a larger slab of wind-drifted snow below.

As the snowfall totals increases, the avalanche danger is going to increase as well. As of sunrise roughly 7-15" inches of new snow has fallen throughout the Wasatch range and the incoming front is predicted to have multiple periods of high snowfall rates this morning and overnight. Out of the wind zone, both slab and loose snow avalanches may break within different the layering of new snow from the last week.

When the snowfall rates are higher, generally greater than 1" per hour, avalanches will be easier to trigger, and more likely to act as a cohesive slab. Pay attention to changing weather and increased snowfall rates.

These avalanches may fail within the new snow (1-2' deep) or at the new snow/old snow interface (which is now 2-5' down) as we saw near the Ant Knolls, Rainbow Peak, and Mill B. It has also been reported that some new snow avalanches have then stepped down to this older interface from last week. These could be large and deadly avalanches, as Drew said earlier this week "the snowpack is more rich, complex, and interesting than I want it to be right now." We have just received so much snow with very few breaks, and the snowpack has not had time to adjust to these large stressors.