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Logan
Hello and good
morning, this is Toby Weed of the
Current Conditions:
Temperatures should warm up some today as the
flow shifts around from the west ahead of an incomming arctic storm system. A westerly wind appears to be intensifying a
bit as I write, with the Campbell Scientific weather station on Logan Peak now reporting
30 mph gusts. Its already a balmy 8
degrees at 9400’. Upper elevations
picked up several inches of fluff in the last few days, with the Tony Grove
Snotel reporting ˝ inch of water equivelent gain in the last 72 hrs. There’s 70 inches of total snow on the ground
containing 85% of the average water for the date. We’ve been able to find nice powder
conditions across the Bear River Range, especially on sheltered slopes.
Avalanche
Conditions:
No significant recent avalanches
reported or observed in the Logan Area.
As the next storm approaches, I like to look closely at future suspect
layers and keep an eye on potential weaknesses developing on or near the snow
surface. The top foot of the snowpack is
now varied and complex, with preserved weak snow, sun and wind crusts, and
light density fluff all in the mix.
Earlier in the week in some
exposed areas, strong north winds built small wind slabs on small grained
sugary snow called near surface facets. Now
buried under a few inches of powder, some of these tricky old hard wind slabs
could still be sensitive to your weight, perhaps allowing you to get out on
them a ways before releasing. New wind
slabs will develop today as westerly winds will easily drift the light surface
powder into upper elevation starting zones. These should be fairly obvious,
smooth and chalky in appearance, and perhaps somewhat hollow sounding.
I still must mention the unlikely possibility of dangerous and un-survivable
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 just 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 warmer westerly flow aloft is in store for today
and is already apparent on
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.
The second annual avalanche awareness ride is
Saturday Feb. 2nd and we’d love to see all of you there! Proceeds help to support snowmobile specific avalanche
awareness projects. Details can be found at http://www.avarides.com/
- January 24th, 26th and 27th, Avalanche Fundamentals, Level 1 Class (Certification), presented by
Friends of the
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.
