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
Monday,
April 21, 2003
Good evening. This is Bruce Tremper with the
Current Conditions:
Over the weekend people
enjoyed the foot or more of nice powder in the upper elevations but by today,
the warm temperatures have goobered everything up
with the exception of a few pa
Mountain Weather:
We’ve got an interesting week
of weather on the way and winter is definitely not over yet—at least in the
mountains. We’ve got two storm systems
on tap for this week. The first one
will pass mostly south of us and will give us snow tonight through
Wednesday. Then we get a slight break on
Thursday and then a stronger, colder storm for Friday, Saturday and
Sunday. We may have two or more feet of
snow in the mountains by the end of the weekend.
In the mean time, tonight we
will have light snow showers and south winds around 15 mph with ridge top
temperatures in the mid 20’s. On
Tuesday, we will have snow through most of the day on a south flow with ridge top
temperatures dropping to the low 20’s.
Then, on Tuesday night and Wednesday we get a slight break before the
flow turns westerly to northwesterly with another shot of precipitation on
Wednesday night. This first storm looks
like it will leave us with about a foot of fairly dense snow and possibly more
in some favored areas. The ridge top
winds don’t look very strong until possibly later on Wednesday.
Avalanche Conditions:
Most of this snow will fall
on a wet, mostly stable, snow surface and it should bond fairly well. At elevations above about 9,500’ the snow
surface is frozen and the new snow will not bond as well, and there you will
probably be able to get some dry snow sluffs and perhaps a few isolated shallow,
soft slabs to go on the steep slopes.
I’m guessing that these will mostly be easy to handle and won’t be
particularly dangerous unless one takes you into something nasty like trees,
over a cliff or into a gully. I don’t
think the wind is going to blow very hard but if it does, it will make some
harder wind slabs, which will be considerably more dangerous. Most of these will probably be fairly
obvious, since they will be right on the surface. They will look smooth and rounded and will
probably crack as you cross them. And it
goes without mentioning this time of year, if the sun comes out, it can quickly
trigger lots of damp sluffs on the steep sun exposed slopes.
Bottom Line:
Tonight the avalanche danger
is LOW but it will
change depending on what the storm does.
With less than a foot of new snow, there will be a MODERATE danger of loose
snow sluffs and isolated areas of soft slabs.
If we get more than about a foot of new snow or if the winds
significantly blow the snow around, the danger may rise to CONSIDERABLE.
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.
Evelyn Lees will update this advisory on Tuesday
afternoon.
Thanks for calling!
________________________________________________________________________
National
Weather Service - Salt Lake City - Snow.
For an explanation of
avalanche danger ratings:
http://www.avalanche.org/usdanger.htm