Today's strong sunshine and warm temperatures will cause the snow to get wet. This wet snow will produce small, loose wet avalanches. A few could be bigger if they entrain more snow as they roll downhill. The good news is that the snow is mostly frozen this morning and has been through several melt-freeze cycle.

Slopes with exposed cliffs and rock bands or gullies where the sunshine is concentrated will be the most likely places to see loose wet avalanches. The most dangerous locations will be in confined gullies this afternoon when these slides can happen on their own and hit you from above.

These types of avalanches are mostly predictable and start occurring as the snow gets more and more wet from sunshine and warm air temperatures. Look for rollerballs and pinwheels rolling downhill and getting bigger as a sign that wet loose avalanches could start occurring.

New snow that fell last weekend was transported by the wind earlier this week. There could be a few slabs of wind drifted snow you could trigger today. Yesterday, Nikki and I skied from White Pine to Hogum Fork. All the wind slabs felt well bonded, but they were resting on slightly softer snow. None of these wind slabs would crack, avalanche, or show signs of instability except when we performed extended column tests which consistently fractured across the entire column after 11-12 taps. For that reason, we simply avoided skiing on any obvious wind drifts which were easy to spot.

Today the odds of triggering a wind slab are low, but I would definitely avoid riding on them if I were above rocks, cliffs, trees, or any terrain where the consequences of a small avalanche would be amplified.