Strong sunshine and warm temperatures will produce wet, loose avalanches today once the snow surface begins to take on heat. Fortunately, this is generally a predictable avalanche problem where you can expect avalanching in the wet snow once it begins to soften. The main concern is having a naturally triggered slide come down onto you, especially if you are in a gully, couloir or other confined terrain where avalanche debris can pile up deeper and you have no route for escape. We may also see wet avalanche activity beginning today on northerly aspects where this colder and drier snow warms up from the strong sunshine.

Timing is everything - once the snow surface becomes wet and unconsolidated it is time to move off of and out from underneath any steep slopes.

A couple of videos that describe the current snowpack setup and possible wet avalanche activity. In this first video, Mark Staples discusses how wet avalanches are likely to occur near the snow surface as well as how the cold/dry snow underneath the surface may also begin to produce avalanching:

What the heck are glide avalanches and gliding snow? They are avalanches that happen when the entire snowpack starts moving downhill on top of some smooth surface like a rock slab, and then at some point, the snow releases and produces an avalanche.

It is impossible to predict when these slides will happen, BUT we usually know where they will happen because they are almost always preceded by a visible glide crack which is a large crack in the snow that extends to the ground. These glide cracks can exist for minutes, hours or days before producing a glide avalanche. Or they may not produce an avalanche at all.

What to do? With such warm weather expected, I wouldn't be surprised to hear of a few glide cracks opening up and possibly a few glide avalanches. Look for glide cracks in the snow and avoid traveling underneath them. The good news is that glide avalanches only happen in a few specific places like Broads Fork and Stairs Gulch where large slabs of rock exist under the snowpack. There were several glide avalanches that happened in Broads Fork on March 2nd and March 5th. Two people died in a glide avalanche in 2001 on April 28th in Stairs Gulch.