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
Friday,
April 04, 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 (updated
To see a list of recent
avalanches, CLICK HERE (updated daily)
Good Morning. This is Bruce Tremper with the Forest Service
Utah
Current Conditions:
Today might be a good
candidate for a call-in-sick-for-work day with storm totals of 12-16 inches of
fairly light density snow in the Cottonwood Canyons with less snow on the
Avalanche Conditions:
Yesterday, the new snow was relatively
benign with the only activity being loose snow sluffs on the steep slopes running
hard, icy surfaces. People occasionally found
some isolated, soft wind slabs but they were fairly manageable and mostly right
near the ridge tops. Today we should
once again have relatively user-friendly conditions. You will be able to push the snow down the
steep slopes in soft, loose snow sluffs, but it probably won’t be much of a
problem unless it pushes you over a cliff, into trees or into a terrain trap
such as a gully. You will also find only
very localized places where the wind has created wind slabs that will crack out
but they will be mostly soft and tend to break at your feet instead of above
you. Be sure to put good slope cuts
across any wind drifts in the new snow before you commit yourself.
Bottom Line (SLC,
Today, the danger is mostly LOW. But there is a MODERATE danger of loose snow sluffs and soft wind
slabs on any slope approaching 40 degrees or steeper, meaning that there are
localized places where you can trigger an avalanche. Also, the danger of damp to wet sluffs will
rise to MODERATE
today if we get sun warming on sun exposed slopes.
Western Unita Mountains -
call 1-800-648-7433 or click
here for weekend and holiday forecasts.
Logan: Call 435-797- 4146 or click here for the web site.
Mountain Weather:
Today, we should have
variable clouds today, then thicker clouds late this afternoon, tonight and on
Saturday. The strong springtime sun may
sneak in between periods of clouds and make the south facing slopes a bit damp
or even wet today. Temperatures are in
the single digits this morning and should rise to 10-15 degrees at 10,000’ and
get up into the mid 20’s at 8,000’.
Ridge top winds will be fairly light from the west, turning southwest
today. We do have a weak disturbance
moving through, which will give us some variable clouds. I’m not expecting much if any snow today but
we should have a moist low pressure coming in for tonight and Saturday. Unfortunately, it looks like the center of
the low will go straight over the top of us, which means that we probably won’t
have enough wind to push the moist air up the mountains and we will be left
with only about 4 inches of snow on Saturday.
For the extended forecast,
this moist, unstable trough should continue to give us unsettled weather
through Monday, giving us occasional periods of snow. The best times for snow look to be Saturday
and then again on Sunday morning through Monday morning. Then we go into a strong high pressure ridge,
which will bring in much warmer temperatures, then more wind later in the week
with another storm about next weekend.
In other words, a less intense version of the weather we had this past
week.
Click here for more
detailed mountain weather forecast and other weather links.
General Information:
Finally, Tom Kimbrough will
issue his last forecast this Sunday and after that, he retires. There’s certainly not enough room here to do
justice to his 40 years spent in the mountains but I will post a retrospective
of his life and career on the web later today.
I often call him the Walter Cronkite of the avalanche world, and we’re
certainly sorry to see him go.
Weather permitting,
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.
Evelyn Lees will update this advisory by 7:00 on
Saturday morning.
Thanks for calling!
________________________________________________________________________
National Weather
Service - Salt Lake City - Snow.
For an explanation of
avalanche danger ratings: