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Forecast for the Uintas Area Mountains

Craig Gordon
Issued by Craig Gordon on
Tuesday morning, February 18, 2020
In the wind zone, at and above treeline, lingering wind drifts may react to our additional weight and a MODERATE avalanche danger exists. Human triggered avalanches are POSSIBLE on steep, wind drifted slopes, especially those with an easterly component to its aspect. Avalanches breaking into deeper, buried weak layers are becoming less likely over time, but are still possible. Usual suspect terrain includes- steep, rocky, upper elevation terrain, especially slopes exhibiting a thin, shallow snowpack. Remember- any slide that breaks to old snow, instantly throws a curve ball at your day.
Lose the wind and you lose much of the problem. Wind sheltered mid and low elevation terrain offers generally LOW avalanche danger.
Low
Moderate
Considerable
High
Extreme
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Weather and Snow
Currently-
A cold burst of air with a few snowflakes slid through the region late last night and temperatures crashed into negative territory, where they sit this morning. Winds switched to the west-northwest around dinnertime, relaxed somewhat and currently blow 10-20 mph along the high peaks. Sunday nights storm delivered close to a foot of new snow and the vast majority of our terrain offers excellent riding right now, especially mid elevation, wind sheltered slopes.
Uinta weather network info is found here. Simply click on the Western Uinta tab.
For today-
Clouds clear out and it'll be a beautiful, yet cold day in the mountains with highs barely cracking into the low 20's. Northerly winds remain well behaved and blow in the teens and low 20's along the ridges.
Futurecast-
A weak cold front slides through the region on Wednesday, producing a few clouds, continued cold temperatures, but little in the way of moisture.
Recent Avalanches
Follow the wind and you'll find the avalanche.
To view additional trip reports and recent avalanche activity, simply click here.
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Avalanche Problem #1
Wind Drifted Snow
Type
Location
Likelihood
Size
Description
Reports from yesterday indicate fresh drifts settled out rapidly by afternoon, and while not particularly deep, they were wide enough to knock you off your feet and take you for an unexpected ride.
Yesterday's warm temperatures and strong sunshine helped shrink-wrap the recent storm snow and many of our instabilities rapidly settled out and gained strength. However, it's not a "just pull the trigger and see what happens" kinda day and there are plenty of places where you could intiate an avalanche that'll boss you around. So... before center-punching a big slope, gather some information by tweaking small test slopes similar in aspect, elevation, and slope angle to what you wanna ride. See how they're reacting and then make fact based decisions on your terrain choices. This strategy leads to a successful day of powder riding, high fives at the trailhead as well as when you roll home to your family this evening.
Avalanche Problem #2
Persistent Weak Layer
Type
Location
Likelihood
Size
Description
We can't see weak layers in the snowpack unless we take a minute, get our shovels out, and investigate... but the snowpack has an amazing memory and doesn't forget where these deficits are located. All we need to do is find one inconsistency (such a shallow, rocky section of the slope like in the image above), collapse the pack, and now we're staring down the barrel of a dangerous avalanche.
It's been nearly a week since we've heard about any avalanches breaking to weak snow, now buried deep in our pack. That of course, is good news, indicating that where the snowpack is deep, it's happy in its own skin. And while our recent storm isn't gonna peel the wheels off the bus, I definitely want to think about suspect terrain I want to continue avoiding and that includes steep, rocky terrain and slopes that avalanched near the ground earlier in the season.
General Announcements
The information in this forecast expires in 24 hours, but will be updated by 7:00 AM Wednesday Feb. 19th.
This forecast is updated daily by 7:00 AM.
In the mean-time, if you see or trigger an avalanche or just wanna let me know what you're seeing you can reach me directly at 801-231-2170
This is a great time of year to schedule one of our free avy awareness presentations.
You can email me directly [email protected]
The information in this forecast is from the US Forest Service which is solely responsible for its content.
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