Hello, this is Toby Weed of the
Current Conditions:
With yesterday's warming and today's wind
you'll find a wide variety of snow conditions in the
Cold temperatures, riding a frigid
northwesterly wind returned to the high country today. It's dropped into
the lower teens at most stations and down to 4 degrees at the Campbell
Scientific weather station on top of
Avalanche Conditions:
Recently formed wind-drifts will be your biggest concern in the backcountry on Wednesday. Today's wind in the mountains was strong enough to build drifts even with the old re-crystallized surface snow. You might trigger an avalanche on some steep slopes in the region where significant drifts formed. Be wary of stiff, hollow sounding and chalky looking drifts or hard slabs, especially when they are resting on sugary or faceted snow. Some wind deposits in exposed terrain could be more than a foot deep by morning.
Cold temperatures and clear nights are
perfect conditions for the process called temperature gradient metamorphism,
which weakens layers in the snowpack. Water vapor moves upward through
the generally shallow snowpack changing the individual grains of snow into
sugary facets. At lower and mid-elevations, and in areas outside the
central
Bottom Line:
There's a MODERATE
avalanche danger and you might trigger an avalanche on some recently
wind-drifted slopes steeper than about 35 degrees in the backcountry. On
the majority of slopes in the
Mountain Weather:
Even without much snowfall, today's blast of
weather spelled the end of the nasty inversion. We can breath
freely in
General Information:
The new Trailhead store on 100 N in
The
Please send backcountry observations to [email protected], especially if you see or trigger an avalanche in the backcountry.
This advisory will expire on Wednesday night. I will update it again on Thursday night.
The information in this advisory is from the U.S. Forest Service, which is solely responsible for its content. This advisory describes general avalanche conditions and local variations always occur.
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