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Forecast for the Salt Lake Area Mountains

Evelyn Lees
Issued by Evelyn Lees for
Tuesday, March 19, 2013

The avalanche danger is generally LOW. However, small avalanches are possible on steep slopes, and in isolated areas or extreme terrain even a small slide can have serious consequences. People could trigger shallow winds drifts along the highest ridgelines, a cornice, or damp sluffs as the day heats up. Steep icy slopes are dangerous.

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Special Announcements
  • Donations from users like you are critical to keeping these advisories coming. Learn why HERE.
  • Ski the night away at the 12 Hours of Canyons. On March 29 at 7 pm, we will start skiing at Canyons and we won’t stop until breakfast goes on the table at 7 am. Have you ever skied all night by headlamp? Do you think you could? How much vertical could you rack up?
Weather and Snow

Under mostly clear skies, there is a wintery feel again this morning, with temperatures in the 20s, and even a few teens along the highest ridges and in the canyon bottoms. The northwesterly winds are in the 10 to 15 mph range with gusts in the 20s. Exposed stations along the highest ridgelines are gusting in the 40s and 50s. Sunday night’s disturbance managed to produce 2 to 6” of snow in the upper elevations of the Park City and Salt Lake mountains. Generally though, hard and icy snow surfaces are widespread, and less than ideal for sledding, snowshoeing and turning until they soften later today.

Recent Avalanches

Only minor avalanche activity was reported yesterday, including a few small soft wind drifts, human triggered dry and damp sluffs where there was new snow, and an unintentional cornice drop on Reynolds – photo below.

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Avalanche Problem #1
Wind Drifted Snow
Type
Location
Likelihood
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Description

Even with a LOW avalanche danger, there are a few places where a person could trigger a small slide. In extreme terrain or on very steep slopes, there could be serious consequences if you go for a fast icy ride, are pushed off a cliff or into trees. Watch out for:

  • Sensitive wind drifts along the highest ridgelines of the Salt Lake and Park City mountains that received 2 to 6” of new snow Sunday night.
  • Cornices breaking back further than expected
  • Small dry sluffs in the most recent snow
  • Damp sluffs in the newest snow, at the low and mid elevations and on steep sunny slopes as the day heats up
  • The widespread icy snow conditions are dangerous on steep slopes.
Additional Information

Skies will be clear to partly cloudy today as a brief ridge of high pressure moves over northern Utah. Temperatures will warm to near 40 at 8000’ and into the low 20s at 10,000’. The northwesterly winds will slowly decrease throughout the day. A pair of storm systems will reach northern Utah starting tomorrow. Clouds and southwesterly winds will increase this evening ahead of Wednesday’s warm storm. Snow and rain showers on Wednesday, with a rain /snow line near 8,000’. A second, much colder storm will move in later Wednesday night, with 6 to 12” of snow possible above 9,000’ on Thursday. Additional light snow is possible on Friday.

General Announcements

Go to http://www.backcountry.com/utah-avalanche-center to get tickets from our partners at Beaver Mountain, Canyons, Sundance, and Wolf Mountain. All proceeds benefit the Utah Avalanche Center.

If you trigger an avalanche in the backcountry - especially if you are adjacent to a ski area – please call the following teams to alert them to the slide and whether anyone is missing or not. Rescue teams can be exposed to significant hazard when responding to avalanches, and do not want to do so when unneeded. Thanks.

Salt Lake and Park City – Alta Central (801-742-2033), Canyons Resort Dispatch (435-615-3322)

Ogden – Snowbasin Patrol Dispatch (801-620-1017)

Powder Mountain Ski Patrol Dispatch (801-745-3772 ex 123)

Provo – Sundance Patrol Dispatch (801-223-4150)

Dawn Patrol Forecast Hotline, updated by 05:30: 888-999-4019 option 8.

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Daily observations are frequently posted by 10 pm each evening.

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UDOT canyon closures UDOT at (801) 975-4838Wasatch Powderbird Guides does daily updates about where they'll be operating on this bloghttp://powderbird.blogspot.com/ .Remember your information can save lives. If you see anything we should know about, please participate in the creation of our own community avalanche advisory by submitting snow and avalanche conditions. You can also call us at 801-524-5304 or 800-662-4140, email by clicking HERE, or include #utavy in your tweet.

Donate to your favorite non-profit –The Friends of the Utah Avalanche Center. The UAC depends on contributions from users like you to support our work.

For a print version of this advisory click HERE.

This advisory is produced by the U.S. Forest Service, which is solely responsible for its content. It describes only general avalanche conditions and local variations always exist. Specific terrain and route finding decisions should always be based on skills learned in a field-based avalanche class

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