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Forecast for the Skyline Area Mountains

Craig Gordon
Issued by Craig Gordon on
Saturday morning, December 27, 2014

At upper elevations at and above treeline, the avalanche danger is CONSIDERABLE. While not widespread, human triggered avalanches are probable on steep, wind drifted slopes facing the north half of the compass. Any slide triggered today has the potential to break deep and wide, resulting in a dangerous avalanche.

A MODERATE avalanche danger exists on recently wind loaded slopes at mid elevations and human triggered avalanches are possible

A LOW avalanche danger exists on low and mid elevation slopes facing the south half of the compass and terrain that had no pre-existing snow prior to last weeks big storm.

Low
Moderate
Considerable
High
Extreme
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Special Announcements

We just released an exciting, new avy safety video designed specifically for snowmobilers - Knowledge is Powder. https://vimeo.com/113677686

NEW THIS YEAR: You can now receive advisories by email for each region in the state. Go here for details.

Weather and Snow

Under clear skies, temperatures crashed into negative territory overnight and currently it's 0 degrees or slightly at most locations. Northwest winds ramped up to 15-25 mph along the high ridges late yesterday, but have have since died down and are light and variable. The surface snow is extremely light and it's an over-the-hood, five star kinda day, especially on mid elevation, wind sheltered slopes.

Thirty five CM new at Millers flat with a total depth of 110 CM

It's deep out there! Steve Cote breaking trail in knee deep, Skyline fluff yesterday. More details on his outing yesterday can be found here.

Recent Avalanches

No recent avalanche activity to report, but the region got clobbered last weekend with dense heavy snow and hurricane force winds. Winds and fresh snow filled in a lot of the crowns and they're not quite as dramatic as just a few days ago, but from the Summit of the Skyline to Miller's Flat, avalanches can be seen everywhere.

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Avalanche Problem #1
New Snow
Type
Location
Likelihood
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Description

Winds didn't get too out of hand yesterday, but they did move just enough snow around to create a few fresh drifts, especially near the summit. More deceptive, not so easy to detect, and even less manageable are avalanches that break to weak layers of snow near the ground. It's what we call persistent slabs. Here's a great video illustrating why they're so dangerous. Any avalanche triggered today has the potential to break into weak layers near the ground, producing a large and dangerous slide. Avoid steep wind drifted terrain and you avoid the problem

Additional Information

After a clear start, we can expect increasing clouds late in the day as another storm system is slated to impact the region early Sunday morning. Northwest winds are gonna add a bite along the ridges, where they'll be blowing 15-25 mph. Temperatures climb into the mid teens and dip into the single digits overnight. Snow begins Sunday morning and a foot seems reasonable by the time the storm winds down Monday.

General Announcements

We're still interested in snow and avalanche information. 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 call me directly at 801-231-2170, email [email protected], or email by clicking HERE

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The information in this advisory is from the US Forest Service which is solely responsible for its content. This advisory describes general avalanche conditions and local variations always occur.

I will update this advisory by 7:00 AM Sunday Dec. 28, 2014.

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