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
To have this advisory automatically e-mailed to you each day free of charge, click HERE.
Good morning, this is Bruce
Tremper with the
We
will be giving a free Avalanche Awareness talk this Saturday, December 6th,
at 7pm, at Kirkham’s, located at
Current Conditions:
If you’re calling or reading
this advisory then you can safely count yourself as one of the hard-core
avalanche advisory junkies. And no,
there are still no avalanches and no weather, so if you want to quit reading or
hang up right now, I won’t be offended.
But if you must…the backcountry snow surface conditions are quite a
mixed bag with old wind slabs up high along the wind-exposed ridges, sun crusts
on slopes that face the south half of the compass and believe it or not,
there’s still some places with 3-6 inches of soft, dry, creamy and
recrystalized snow that you could confuse with powder if you were from out of
state. You’ll find this soft, dry snow
mostly down off the ridges at mid elevation, open or gladed
tree slopes that face north through east.
This morning, temperatures are 20-25 along the ridges and the high
temperature yesterday was around freezing or just above. The winds this morning are blowing only about
10 mph from the west.
Avalanche Conditions:
It’s
a dull day in the avalanche world with very stable snow. These are good conditions to go exploring
that new terrain you’ve always wanted to get into but have been too scared to
try these past few years. However, watch
out for some of the old wind slabs on steep slopes. They are mostly old and have dissipated all
their tension but you may be able to find a few that you can still crack
out. When you’re out today, it’s also
important to think about the future and carefully map the snow surface
conditions in your mind so that you’ll know what will be buried under the new
snow we expect for later in the weekend.
On the shady slopes, the clear skies continue to make the snow surface
weaker and weaker through what we call “diurnal recrystallization”
and this may be persistent weak layer when we slam some weight down on it with
out next storm. Also, the snow in the
thinner snowpack areas continues to rot out and is now intermediate-sized depth
hoar crystals, which is always a nasty foundation for any snowpack.
Bottom Line (
There is a LOW avalanche danger today, with both natural and human
triggered avalanches unlikely.
Mountain Weather:
Today, we’ll have another warm, sunny day with ridge
top temperatures 30-35 degrees and 8,000’ temperatures around 40. Ridge top winds will blow 10-15 mph from the
west, turning southwest later in the day.
The only big news around here is an approaching storm for this
weekend. On Friday, we should get the
usual pre-storm weather with strong, warm winds from the southwest. We may see a few spits of rain on Friday even
up to the highest elevations and then the freezing level will slowly lower on
Saturday with light rain in the valleys and snow in the mountains. We expect the cold front to pass on Sunday,
which will bring snow to the valley floor and then continued snow on Monday. Then we may get another storm on about
Wednesday.
3-Day Table |
3-Day Graph |
7-Day Table |
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.
You
can sign-up for the 3-day classes offered by the Friends of the Utah Avalanche
Center at The Black Diamond Store (2092 E. 3900 S.; 278-0233). The classes are being held Jan. 17-19 and
Feb. 14-16.
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 on Friday 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