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
Thursday,
March 13, 2003
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Good Morning. This is Bruce Tremper with the
Current Conditions:
Yesterday was the best day of
the year for the Smart family and today will be the warmest day of the winter
in the mountains. Usually, temperatures
drop overnight, but last night the ridge top temperatures continued to either
remain steady or rise through the night to peg out between freezing and 40
degrees. Down in the mountain valley
bottoms, the clear sky cooled the snow down and the cold air pooled keeping
temperatures just at or below freezing.
As far as snow surface conditions, the snow is either wet or refrozen
below about 9,000 feet with old wind damaged snow within 1000 vertical feet of
the ridge tops. The only dry snow left
is on north facing slopes above about 9,000 feet and you might find something
resembling corn snow this morning on south facing slopes if you get it early.
Avalanche Conditions:
If we’re going to get any
avalanche activity from warming, today is the day. At least at elevations below 9,000’, we haven’t
had a solid refreeze since Monday morning and we’ve had shallow refreezes since
then. Day time highs at 8,000’ have been
in the upper 40’s to 50 yesterday. Ridge top temperatures have been climbing
steadily for the past several days and they are at or well above freezing at most
mountain stations.
Yesterday, someone reported seeing
a slab avalanche high in Stairs Gulch, which is very steep, shallow, rocky
terrain, and the
Bottom Line (SLC,
Today, there is a MODERATE danger of both natural and human-triggered wet
sluffs, wet slab avalanches, dry slabs and cornice falls at all aspects and
elevations. The avalanche danger will
likely rise to CONSIDERABLE in the heat of the afternoon on
steep, shallow, rocky areas, especially in thinner snowpack areas outside of
the Cottonwood Canyons where the snowpack is thinner.
Mountain Weather:
Today will be extremely warm
with ridge top temperature rising into the low to mid 40’s and 8,000’ temperatures
rising into the mid 50’s. Ridge top
winds will begin to blow more strongly through the day, rising to 30 mph by
this evening from the south and southwest.
By Friday, temperatures will finally begin to cool with increasing
clouds and continued strong winds. For
the extended forecast, our winter is not over yet, as we have another juicy
looking storm headed our way for later on Saturday through about Tuesday, which
looks like it will put down some significant snow, then perhaps more snow on
about Thursday.
General Information:
Also, the Wasa
To report backcountry snow
and avalanche conditions, especially if you observe or trigger an avalanche,
please leave a message on our answer machine at (801) 524-5304 or
1-800-662-4140, or email to [email protected]
or fax to 801-524-6301. 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.
Tom Kimbrough will update this advisory by
Thanks for calling!
________________________________________________________________________
National Weather Service - Salt Lake City - Snow.
For an explanation of
avalanche danger ratings: