Wasatc h
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/
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Avalanche
advisory
Monday, NOVEMBER
24, 2003 7:30 am
Good morning, this is Drew
Hardesty with the
Current Conditions:
The cold air mass has moved
on and temperatures are a good twenty degrees warmer than this time yesterday. Under partly cloudy skies, most mountain
locations are reporting temps in the twenties with some cold air pooling in the
mountain valleys and alpine basins. The
winds have picked up into the twenty mph range ahead of this afternoon’s
disturbance and have shifted to the west-southwest. Some of the more exposed wind stations are
showing winds in the 30-40mph range, but these should calm down in the
afternoon as the winds veer back to the northwest. Snow surface conditions are a settled 6” or so
on top of various crusts, with perhaps the best snow found in sheltered
mid-elevation areas.
Avalanche Conditions:
With
good turning and riding conditions and a generally low avalanche danger,
backcountry travelers yesterday swarmed nearly every nook and cranny in the
Wasatch. Some reported minor sluffing in
the new snow and I suspect that sluffing on the steep slopes will become more
widespread today as the snow surface has been weakening under clear cold conditions.
By its very nature, faceting in the
upper layers of the snowpack prevents settlement and consolidation, and any
loose snow avalanches today will run farther and entrain more snow. Best to avoid being knocked
off your feet or machine and carried over a cliff band, into some trees or
deposited in a terrain trap. Keep
in mind as well that we do have a few of the ingredients set up for an avalanche:
most of the light density snow/surface facets are sitting on top of an
underlying wind or sun crust. A
significant shot of snow would easily tip the scales.
Bottom
Line (
The avalanche danger is
mostly LOW today with
some localized areas of MODERATE
in the upper elevations where it may still be possible to trigger a shallow
wind drift. These will be confined to
the highest elevations on slopes steeper than 35 degrees.
Mountain Weather:
As most of the energy of a storm moves past to the north, Utah can expect
to see increasing clouds this morning and maybe squeeze an inch or two out of
it today or tonight. Winds will be
20-30mph out of the west this morning, shifting to the northwest by afternoon
and dropping to 10-15mph. 8000’ temperatures
will be 20 degrees with 10,000’ temps in the mid-teens. We’ll be in a moist northwest flow with light
snow expected Tuesday and Wednesday, with the return of fair weather on
Thanksgiving. Another storm is on track
for the weekend.
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For specific digital forecasts for selected mountain areas from the
National Weather Service, click the links below or choose your own specific
location at the National
Weather Service Digital Forecast Page:
General
Information:
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.
Andrew
McLean will update this advisory Tuesday 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