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Forecast for the Skyline Area Mountains

Brett Kobernik
Issued by Brett Kobernik for
Monday, April 4, 2022
The majority of the terrain on the Manti Skyline has a LOW avalanche danger.
However, a CONSIDERABLE danger still exists on slopes steeper than 30 degrees that face northwest, north and northeast above about 10,000'.
Large and dangerous human triggered avalanches are still likely in that terrain.
Low
Moderate
Considerable
High
Extreme
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Weather and Snow
Current Conditions
Sunday ended up being a nicer day than anticipated with the cloud cover more translucent and enough sun filtering through to actually make shadows. Riding was good again. The snow surface should have frozen up again decently overnight with low temperatures in the upper 20s to around freezing. The wind has been almost calm.
Mountain Weather
Today will start out really nice and then clouds will move in later on. Temperatures will get into the mid 40s. West southwest wind will increase as the day goes on and might be pretty strong later. We have a storm moving through tonight but it's looking less impressive than it did. I'm thinking we'll see only a few inches of snow by Tuesday morning. The rest of the week looks sunny with gradually warming temperatures.
Recent Avalanches
I went and looked at an avalanche on the Towhead yesterday. There were actually two of them side by side. They most likely released naturally on Thursday due to wind loading. This fits in with the current pattern: high elevation, northerly facing, very steep starting zone, broke into mid winter Persistent Weak Layer. However, this is the only natural activity that I've heard of recently.
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Avalanche Problem #1
Persistent Weak Layer
Type
Location
Likelihood
Size
Description
Second verse, same as the first!! Steep high elevation northerly facing slopes remain suspect. The mid winter Persistent Weak Layer just will not go away. Unprecedented. We will look back at this situation for years to come. The most likely place to trigger an avalanche is in the terrain described below:
  • Above 10,000'
  • Northwest, north and northeast facing slopes
  • Slopes steeper than 30 degrees. (to be honest, slopes need to be steeper than 35 degrees to avalanche right now but 30 degrees is the number you should use to stay safe)
If you avoid that terrain, you will not trigger one of these large avalanches. Avoidance is the only sure mitigation tool.
General Announcements
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.