Wasatch Cache National Forest

In partnership with: The Friends of the Utah Avalanche 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

Thursday, April 17, 2003

Good Afternoon.  This is Bruce Tremper with the Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center with your backcountry avalanche and mountain weather advisory for the Wasatch Range.  Today is Thursday, April 17, 2003, and it’s about 5:30 in the afternoon.

 

Current Conditions:

Kind of a blah, cloudy and warm in the mountains today with frozen conditions in the morning, once again, and softening up in the afternoon, which is pretty much standard fare for mid April.  The daytime high on today was in the mid 40’s around 8,000’ and the upper 20’s at 11,000’.   There’s a slim band of dry snow left on straight north facing slopes above 10,000’, but everything else is either has various kinds of sun crusts or is mushy.

 

Avalanche Conditions:

Although things were very quiet today, we do have a storm on our doorstep.  With a solid underlying snowpack, Friday’s avalanche conditions will depend entirely on what the storm does.  My guess is that the new snow will stick fairly well to the wet snow but it will tend to sluff off more easily when it falls on the hard, frozen crusts.  In other words, at lower elevation areas and south facing slopes the new snow will fall on a wet surface while at upper elevations and north facing slopes the new snow will tend to fall on a hard, frozen surface, where it may be a little more active.  Unless the wind blows very hard, the new snow should be soft, shallow and easy to deal with.  Any avalanches will probably be just loose snow sluffs and any slabs will mostly break at your feet instead of above you.  If the winds blow hard, then the resulting wind slabs will be harder and break farther above you, but I’m not expecting particularly strong winds or a lot of new snow, so I’m expecting that things will be fairly benign, but remember that weather forecasting is often wrong, so if we do get more snow or wind that I think, you should bump the danger ratings up by a notch.

 

Probably more importantly, if we do get sun or warmer temperatures during the day on Friday, any new snow will form damp to wet sluffs on the steep, sun exposed slopes, so watch out for large south facing slopes and gully bottoms under sun exposed slopes.

 

Remember that we are no longer giving morning updates so on Friday morning, you should probably check the web sites to see how much snow fell and what the winds did overnight.  You can check National Weather Service - Salt Lake City - Snow.

 

Bottom Line (SLC, Park City, Ogden and Provo Area Mountains):

As new snow accumulates, the avalanche danger will rise from LOW to MODERATE on any steep slope with more than about 6 inches of new snow or any steep slope with recent wind drifts.  With any daytime heating by the sun, the danger will rise to MODERATE on any steep sun exposed slope.

 

Western Uinta Mountains: Click Here

Logan – call 435-797-4146 or Click Here.

 

Mountain Weather:

The snow should begin this evening complete with the chance of lightning.  Ridge top winds will turn from south to northwesterly by morning and blow 15-20 mph with stronger gusts.  We should get a bit of a break late tonight and early Friday morning with another shot later on Friday.  Then things should be clearing out on Saturday morning.  I’m not expecting a lot of snow out of this storm, probably around 6 inches in most upper elevation areas and the snow should be fairly dense.  Ridge top temperatures tonight will be around 18 degrees and rise into the mid to upper 20’s on Friday.  8,000’ temperatures should be in the mid 20’s overnight and in the mid 30’s on Friday.  For the extended forecast, we have a nice weekend with warm temperatures and then another storm on Monday and Tuesday.

 

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 on Friday afternoon.

 

Thanks for calling!

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National Weather Service - Salt Lake City - Snow.

For an explanation of avalanche danger ratings:

http://www.avalanche.org/usdanger.htm