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Logan
Hello and good
morning, this is Toby Weed of the
Current Conditions:
You can find nice cold powder conditions in
sheltered terrain, and variable, wind affected snow in exposed areas. It’s currently 4 degrees at the CSI weather
station on Logan Peak, and 14 in Logan.
Under mostly cloudy skies, it’ll warm up slightly today with mountain
high temperatures in the teens. 3/10s of
an inch of water, or 3 or 4 inches of snow fell in the last 24 hrs, and there’s
70 inches of total snow on the ground at the Tony Grove Snotel with 85% of
average water contained in the snow.
Strong northerly winds blasted exposed terrain once again yesterday, and
you’ll find stiff and soft drifts and other old and new wind carnage at all
elevations in many areas.
Avalanche Conditions:
We were still able to trigger shallow hard wind slabs and shooting cracks
yesterday in Tuesday’s dusty (brownish) drifted snow. Weak sugary or faceted snow formed near the
snow surface at the beginning of the week.
Now the widespread drifted dirty layer, which will be a good for marking
the 1-15 date in future snowpits, is capping this
weakness. The recent
tragic accident near
You might find some sizable wind slabs today in exposed upper elevation
terrain. These should be fairly obvious,
smooth and chalky in appearance, and perhaps somewhat hollow sounding. Some, older drifts will be obscured by a few
inches of fluff. You should avoid steep
drifted slopes at all elevations, as some of today’s wind slabs could be larger
than expected and carry you for a dangerous ride.
I still must mention the possibility of dangerous and destructive deep
slab avalanches. There may be isolated
slopes in the region where a deep slab is not well anchored to underlying
smooth terrain and where it is thin enough for the instability to be activated
by your weight or that of a smaller overrunning wind slab avalanche. It will likely take a large trigger to
initiate such an avalanche, so be wary of putting more than one person and one
sled on a slope at one time. A few of
you weighting a suspect slab together might do the trick.
Bottom Line:
There’s a MODERATE danger on
steep drifted slopes and wind slab avalanches are possible in exposed terrain, especially
at upper elevations. The danger is
generally LOW in
sheltered terrain and on the majority of steep slopes in the backcountry. Although currently unlikely, deadly triggered
deep slab avalanches are still possible on isolated slopes with existing weak
snow near the ground. Use good snow
assessment and safe travel techniques to minimize your risks.
Mountain Weather:
A cold northerly flow will remain over the region
today, and a Canadian storm will bring snowfall later in the weekend. Expect arctic-like conditions to moderate
only a little today with clouds and numerous snow flurries but not much
accumulation. There’s potential for
significant snow fall late Saturday night or Sunday, with storminess potentially
lingering well into next week.
General
Information:
Check
out photos of avalanches in the Logan Area on our images page.
Go to the Avalanche Encyclopedia if you have any
questions about terms I use in the advisory
I'm very
interested to know what you're seeing out there. Please
e-mail observations to me at [email protected] or leave me a message at 755-3638, especially if you
see or trigger an avalanche in the backcountry. We keep all observations
confidential.
This advisory will expire in 24 hours from the
posting time.
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.
