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
Wednesday,
April 23, 2003
Good afternoon. This is Bruce Tremper with the
Current Conditions:
In the upper elevations about
2-4 inches of fresh snow fell yesterday with rain below about 7,500’. It was enough to freshen things up and it was
quite nice today with dust on supportable crust above about 9,500’ and the
underlying snow was a little mushy below about 9,000’ but still nice. The ridge top temperatures have cooled down
to the lower 20’s from near 30 yesterday and the 9,000’ temperatures are around
30.
Avalanche Conditions:
The avalanche conditions
remain fairly dull. With the exception
of some sluffing of the new snow on the steep slopes, most of the underlying
snow is fairly stable. The only problems
I can see is if one of these sluffs of new snow takes you over a cliff or into
a terrain trap like a gully. Also, at
elevations below about 9,500’, the snow is quite mushy and if you bulldozed the
snow into a pile on a steep slope, it might gouge down and make a deeper, wet
avalanche, but so far it seems to be staying place fairly well. We’re supposed to get a little more new snow
this afternoon and evening from a few more spring showers, but I don’t think
they will amount to much.
Bottom Line:
For tonight and Thursday, the
avalanche danger is generally LOW. With
strong heating by the sun on Thursday, the avalanche danger from damp to wet
sluffs may rise to MODERATE
on steep, sun exposed slopes, especially in the heat of the afternoon. If we get more than about 8 inches of new
snow overnight, you can bump the danger ratings up a no
Mountain
Weather:
We should have a short-lived
ridge for Thursday, which should give us mostly sunny skies in the mountains
and warmer temperatures. After a shallow
freeze tonight, the 8,000’ temperature should get up into the lower 50’s and
the 10,000’ temperatures should be in the upper 30’s. Winds should be from the southwest and become
stronger on Thursday night and Friday.
For the extended forecast, we
have another spring storm heading mostly north of us for Friday and Saturday
but it looks like it will nip us enough to give us some pulses of snow in the
mountains with rain in the valleys.
Then, there should be a little break on Sunday and another pulse on
Monday.
General Information:
Since the avalanche and
weather conditions are fairly benign, we will wait a couple days before
updating this forecast again. We will
probably put more information on for Friday afternoon. Then we will finally pull the plug on the
avalanche advisories for the season after this weekend.
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 Friday
afternoon.
Thanks for calling!
________________________________________________________________________
National
Weather Service - Salt Lake City - Snow.
For an explanation of
avalanche danger ratings:
http://www.avalanche.org/usdanger.htm