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
Saturday,
March 22, 2003
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Good Morning. This is Evelyn Lees with the
Current Conditions:
Spring is an enchanting time
in the user friendly Wasa
While many slopes are crusted
this morning, the classic upper elevation, northerly facing slopes still hold
decent caches of soft settled powder.
Later in the day, the crusts will soften to a more user friendly slush.
Avalanche Conditions:
A typical spring avalanche
concern is heating. As temperatures rise
today, the danger of wet slides will increase, especially on slopes receiving
direct sunlight. Expect loose wet sluffs
on steep slopes of all aspects at low and mid elevations, and on steep, sunlit
slopes at the higher elevations. These
wet sluffs are large enough to take you for a ride off a cliff, into trees, or
even bury you if the snow piles up in a gully bottom. So when the snow begins to get wet and sloppy,
its time to get off of and out from under steep slopes.
Shallow drifts of wind blown
snow may have formed along the higher ridges.
On steep slopes, these drifts may be just large enough to knock you off
your feet and send you for a ride. The
depth and area of these drifts will increase later today and tonight as wind
speeds increase.
And finally, there remains an
isolated chance of triggering an avalanche breaking into deeply buried faceted
snow on steep slopes, especially those with a shallow snowpack above
9,500. Six of these deep slides were
released with explosives in the Cottonwoods on Wednesday and Thursday. They were 2 to 5 deep and up to 400 across. All were at upper elevations, with north and
east facing slopes the most active. While
there are only isolated places where a person could trigger one of these slides,
the consequences would be devastating.
Bottom Line (SLC,
The danger of wet slides is LOW this morning but will
rise to MODERATE on
sun exposed slopes and all steep low and mid elevation slopes as the day warm
up. There is also a MODERATE danger of
triggering very dangerous deeper avalanches on slopes steeper than 35 degrees
and above 9,500 feet, especially on slopes that face north and east.
Mountain Weather:
A Pacific cold front will
move across the area on Sunday. Ahead of
the storm, a warm southwest flow will develop over northern
General Information:
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.
Ethan Greene will update this advisory by
Thanks for calling!
________________________________________________________________________
National Weather Service - Salt Lake City - Snow.
For an explanation of
avalanche danger ratings: