Wasatc h
Cache National Forest
In partnership with: The Friends of the Utah
The Utah Avalanche Center Home page is: http://www.avalanche.org/~uac/
Avalanche advisory
Tuesday,
April 15, 2003
Good Afternoon. This is Bruce Tremper with the
Current Conditions:
Our mighty storm was what a
rock climber would call all chalk and no action. It teased us along for three days of blustery,
egotistical, huff-and-puff, it delivered a lame performance, then
it skipped town before anyone noticed. Most
mountain areas ending up with just a couple inches with a small island of 5
inches in upper Little Cottonwood Canyon.
The snow is dense with about a half inch of water weight. Temperatures didn’t cool down much before
the snow arrived, so the old snow is mushy underneath with a breakable crust on
top at elevations below about 9,500’. As
far as skiing and boarding conditions, it’s mushy, grabby, tricky snow below
9,500’ where lock-down heels are nice and it’s a couple inches of thick snow on
a supportable crust above 9,500’. But
hey, it’s April. What did you expect?
Avalanche Conditions:
There’s not much going on in
the avalanche department. The cooler
temperatures will freeze up the old wet snow below 9,500’ but it will take a
day or so because it’s insulated with a little new snow. Tomorrow, there may be a few steep slopes
where you can plow up some wet snow and get a small wet goober going at lower
elevations. The other potential problem
I found today was some very localized, soft wind slabs
along the most upper elevation ridges. The
winds are blowing 30 gusting to 40 from the west along the highest peaks, which
is blowing the new snow into shallow, soft drifts, but there’s not much new
snow and it’s quite dense, so the wind slabs will be very localized and
shallow.
Bottom Line (SLC,
On
Wednesday, you will find mostly a LOW danger of human triggered avalanches with some pockets of MODERATE, or localized, danger on any steep slope with a recent wind
drift and also a lingering MODERATE
danger of wet sluffs in lower elevation snow on very steep slopes.
Mountain Weather:
Act I of our storm is about
over and after some lingering clouds and light showers overnight, Wednesday a
weak ridge should temporarily build and we should have partly cloudy skies with
ridge top temperatures rising up into the mid 20’s and 8,000’ temperatures
rising up to nearly 40 degrees. Then on
Thursday afternoon through about Saturday, Act II of the storm looks to be stronger
and colder than the last one.
General Information:
To report backcountry snow
and avalanche conditions, especially if you observe or trigger an avalanche,
call (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 some time
Wednesday afternoon.
Thanks for calling!
________________________________________________________________________
National
Weather Service - Salt Lake City - Snow.
For an explanation of
avalanche danger ratings: