Wasatc h
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 Utah Avalanche Center Home page
is: http://www.avalanche.org/~uac/
Avalanche advisory
Monday,
March 17, 2003
If you want this advisory
automatically e-mailed to you each day for free, click HERE.
If you want recent archives
of this advisory, click HERE.
To e-mail us an observation, CLICK HERE.
To see photos of recent
avalanche activity CLICK HERE (will updated
To see a list of recent
avalanches, CLICK HERE (updated daily)
Good Morning. This is Bruce Tremper with the
Current Conditions:
This morning the snow is
beginning to fall again and I’m expecting snow showers through the day. Winds are out of the north and they have
picked up to around 20 mph with stronger gusts, and ridge top temperatures are
in the mid teens with temperatures in the mid 20’s to just below freezing down
around 7 to 8,000’. Yesterday, the sun
sneaking through the thin clouds made mashed potatoes out of the new snow and
put a bit of a crust on all slopes except the straight north facing ones, where
you can still find a foot of dense powder snow this morning in the
Avalanche Conditions:
Yesterday, there were at
least six human triggered avalanches in the backcountry. All of them were soft slab avalanches in higher
elevations of the Cottonwood Canyons about a foot deep and ranging from 50 to
100 feet wide on slopes approaching 40 degrees or steeper, on slopes facing the
north half of the compass. All were above
9,500’ in elevation and most, but not all, were near ridge lines on slopes that
got heavy wind drifting from Saturday’s strong south winds. Yesterday, there was also an
attention-grabbing deep hard-slab avalanche in the backcountry east of
Yesterday, the avalanche
conditions were extremely elevation dependent with wet snow and localized wet
sluffs and wet slabs below about 9,000’ and dry soft slabs and localized hard
slab avalanches above about 9,500’. I’m
thinking that the new snow is so warm and dense that the soft slab instability will
settle out quickly and today there will be much more localized places where you
can still trigger avalanches.
Bottom Line (SLC,
Today there is low end of MODERATE danger of human
triggered soft and hard slab dry avalanches above 9,500’, mostly on slopes that
face the north half of the compass, plus east facing slopes. If, by some chance, we get more than about 8
inches of new snow today or if the winds become strong, you can expect the
danger to rise to CONSIDERABLE
on steep slopes with recent wind drifts.
Bottom Line: (
Mountain Weather:
We have unusual weather today
with a very large, closed low pressure system that covers most of the
General Information:
As a special treat the more
scientifically inclined avalanche nerds out there, our own Ethan Greene will be
giving a more advanced-level avalanche talk at REI tomorrow night called the “science
of avalanches.” This will be at
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.
I will update this advisory by
Thanks for calling!
________________________________________________________________________
National Weather Service - Salt Lake City - Snow.
For an explanation of
avalanche danger ratings: