Wasatch
Cache National Forest
In partnership with: The Friends of the Utah Avalanche Forecast Center, Utah Department of
Public Safety Division of Comprehensive Emergency Management, Salt Lake County,
and Utah State Parks
The FS
Utah Avalanche Center ’s Home page has moved!
Our
new URL is: http://www.avalanche.org/~uac/
please update your Bookmarks!
Avalanche advisory
sUNDAY, MARCH 10, 2002 7:30 AM
NEW!
If you want
this forecast e-mailed to you each day, click here.
If you want to see photos of
recent avalanches, click here.
If you want to see photos of avalanche
terrain, click here.
If you want recent archives
of this advisory, click here.
Good morning, this is Bruce
Tremper with the
Don’t
miss the always-popular, annual Banff Mountain Film Festival at the U of U’s
Kingsbury Hall this coming Tuesday and Wednesday at
Current Conditions:
The ridge top winds are huffing
and puffing from the south all night with hourly averages 30-40 and gusting to
70 in the exposed locations. Yesterday,
there was about a foot of nice, soft creamy snow in wind sheltered areas but
above tree line, it was wind slab city with lots of wind damage. The sun made a sun crust on the sunny aspects
and it was quite mushy below about 8,500’.
Avalanche Conditions:
Friday
night’s clear skies and cold temperatures settled out Friday’s wind slabs
fairly quickly and yesterday, people were finding the wind slabs to be fairly
stubborn. Still, several people managed
to trigger avalanches yesterday. Skiers
kicking a cornice in West Monitor triggered a 1-2 foot deep, soft slab 100 feet
wide on an east facing wind loaded slope.
Snowmobiles triggered a soft slab on their own private land in Cardiff
Fork on Holy Toledo and outran the slide.
Control work in upper Little Cottonwood Canyon and backcountry explosive
testing produced several slides that broke deeper into old, faceted snow both
in upper Little Cottonwood Canyon and in American Fork. During the storm on Friday, a very large
natural avalanche occurred in the western
Today,
we continue to have a complicated pattern.
First, there are the old wind slabs from the west and northwest winds on
Friday but most of these have settled out and stabilized. Second, the very strong south winds from
yesterday afternoon and last night have created a whole new round of wind
slabs. You’ll find these mostly on above
or near tree line, north facing slopes and cross loaded into many other slopes
as well. In other words, as usual, you
should avoid steep slopes with recent deposits of wind drifted snow. Finally, the deeper layers of sugary faceted
snow created from the clear weather over the past couple months is teetering on
the brink of disaster in some localized areas.
I wish I could tell you exactly where you might find some of these booby
traps but the pattern is quite complex.
The problem exists at all elevations and many different aspects. The several large avalanches on this layer
Friday and yesterday, continue to confirms our worries
about this layer and with each wind or snow storm, it will likely reactivate
our old nemesis.
Bottom Line:
The danger of human triggered avalanches is MODERATE
in most areas and on most slopes steeper than 35 degrees with isolated areas of
CONSIDERABLE
danger on upper elevation wind exposed
terrain with recent wind drifts. Thin
snowpack areas such as the western
(Provo Area
Mountains and Western Uinta Mountains)
These
areas have had a thin snowpack most of the winter and sugary weak snow is more common
than in the Cottonwood Canyons. The
danger of human triggered avalanches is more widespread in the Provo and
Western Uinta Mountains, especially where wind drifted.
Elevation
dependent, significantly more snow as increase in elevation.
(Ogden Area Mountains)
Same
as SLC area mountains.
Mountain Weather:
Today several weak
disturbances in a westerly flow will continue to bring variable clouds, strong
ridge top winds and possibly a few light snow showers to the mountains. Ridge top winds will blow 30-40 with higher
gusts from the south, switching to the west northwest by tonight. Ridgetop
temperatures will be near 20 degrees today and tonight with 8,000’ temperatures
in the lower 30’s. As for the extended
forecast, we don’t see any significant snow until possibly mid week when another
blast of cold air may reach us from central
General Information:
The
Wasatch Powderbird Guides probably not be flying today because of the
wind. If they do, they will fly in the
American Fork drainage. For more
information call 521-6040 ext. 5280.
To
report backcountry snow and avalanche conditions, especially if you observe or
trigger an avalanche, you can leave a message at (801) 524-5304 or
1-800-662-4140. Or you can e-mail an
observation to uacobs@avalanche .org, or you can fax
an observation to 801-524-6301.
For
more detailed mountain weather and avalanche information, your can call
801-364-1591, which we’ll try to have updated by around
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.
I
will update this advisory by
Thanks for calling!
________________________________________________________________________
For
more detailed weather information go to our Mountain Weather Advisory
National
Weather Service - Salt Lake City - Snow.
For an explanation of
avalanche danger ratings: