Wasatch 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

 

: http://www.avalanche.org/~uac/

 

Avalanche advisory

Tuesday. November 4, 2003   7:30 am

 

Good morning, this is Bruce Tremper with the Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center with your avalanche and mountain weather advisory.  Today is Tuesday, November 04, 2003, and it’s 7:30 a.m.

 

Current Conditions:

Wow, what a great start to the season.  Just a couple more inches of snow fell overnight in Little Cottonwood Canyon to add to the foot of 10 percent water snow they got yesterday.  Five more inches fell overnight at Solitude.  The westerly flow overnight favored Snowbasin and they got 8 more inches overnight and the 1000 Peaks area in the Uinta Mountains got 14 inches.  Although we don’t have a lot of observations or automated weather stations working this early in the season, it looks like most of the mountain areas have a settled snow depth of about two feet with close to three feet in Weber Canyon of the Uinta Mountains.

 

Avalanche Conditions:

At least at upper elevations in Little Cottonwood Canyon, the new snow was denser than the snow just underneath and a couple of our observers reported fairly widespread soft slab avalanches on anything over 35 degrees in steepness, but these slides were fairly soft and not breaking particularly wide.  I’m guessing that most of the instability will have settled out by today unless we get an increase in wind.  One report from mid elevation in the Solitude area yesterday did not indicate any problems with avalanches, just the pesky problem of the powder blowing up over your head as you skied.  We don’t have much information coming in this time of year, so we won’t issue any danger ratings, but we will just pass along what little information we have.  We just got back in our office for the first time yesterday, so we’re still trying to get everything up and working.  We hope to have our full program running by the end of the week.  Finally, remember that the ski resorts are not open yet and they are not doing any avalanche control, so you have to treat them just like the backcountry.  Wear beacons and shovels, cross avalanche terrain one at a time and don’t jump into a run when there is someone below you.

 

Mountain Weather:

One disturbance will move through this morning and another will arrive later today into this evening. This will bring occasional snow showers to the region with an additional several inches of snow. A break in the precipitation is expected later Wednesday into Thursday.  Temperatures will remain in the mid 20’s with ridgetop winds will remain from the west today and turn northwesterly by tonight and blow around 10-15 mph.

 

General Information:

Don’t miss the annual ski swap at REI this weekend but on by the Friends of the Utah Avalanche Center.  You can check in any backcountry or cross country equipment Thursday and Friday evenings and the swap opens at 9:00 am on Saturday morning.  Call 365-5522 for more information.

 

 

Digital Forecast for point: 40.565, -111.606 at elevation: 10194 ft
1 miles southeast of Alta.

 

 

 

Tue 

 

Nov

 

4

 

 

Wed 

 

Nov

 

5

 

 

Thu 

 

Nov

 

6

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Daily-Temp

Low

 

12

 

High

 

21

Low

 

8

 

High

 

20

Low

 

5

 

High

 

26

 

 

 

 

Weather

Snow Showers

Chance Snow Showers

Slight Chance Snow Showers

 

 

 

 

 

Chance of Precip

88%

80%

80%

50%

20%

10%

9%

 

 

 

 

Precip

0.17"

0.09"

0.06"

0.09"

0.10"

0.08"

0.06"

0.00"

0.00"

0.00"

0.00"

0.00"

 

 

 

 

12-hr Snow Total

 

2"

3"

1"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

6-Hour

11pm

5am

11am

5pm

11pm

5am

11am

5pm

11pm

5am

11am

5pm

 

 

 

 

Cloudiness

95%

80%

80%

80%

80%

80%

80%

59%

59%

85%

85%

70%

 

 

 

 

Temp

13

14

21

16

8

14

19

13

5

16

25

23

 

 

 

 

Dewpoint

12

12

18

14

7

9

14

10

2

4

12

14

 

 

 

 

Relative Humdity

95%

91%

87%

91%

95%

80%

80%

87%

87%

58%

57%

67%

 

 

 

 

Wind

W

W

SW

SW

SW

SW

SW

SW

SW

SW

SW

NE

 

 

 

14

14

14

14

12

12

12

12

11

7

2

1

 

 

 

 

If you are getting into the backcountry, please give us a call and let us know what you’re seeing, especially if you trigger an avalanche.  You can leave a message at 524-5304 or 1-800-662-4140.  Or you can e-mail an observation to uac@avalanche .org, or you can fax an observation 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. 

 

We will update this advisory sometime on Wednesday morning.

 Thanks for calling!

_____________________________________________________________________________

For more detailed weather information go to our Mountain Weather Advisory

National Weather Service - Salt Lake City - Snow.

For an explanation of avalanche danger ratings:

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