Wasatch Cache National Forest

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, visit: http://www.mailermailer.com/x?oid=16351h.                 

For photos of avalanches and avalanche phenomenon, visit:  http://www.avalanche.org/%7Euac/photos_03-04.htm      (Updated 2/12)

Photos sent in by observers throughout the season visit:  http://www.avalanche.org/~uac/obphotos/observer.html.      (Updated 2/12)

For a list of backcountry avalanche activity, visit:  http://www.avalanche.org/%7Euac/Avalanche_List.htm.     (Updated 2/12)

 

Avalanche advisory

Friday, February 13, 2004,   7:30 am

 

Good morning, this is Bruce Tremper with the Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center with your backcountry avalanche and mountain weather advisory.  Today is Friday, February 13, 2004, and it’s 7:30 a.m.

 

Current Conditions:

My face is sore this morning from getting blasted by below zero temperatures and winds along the ridge tops for the past couple days.  But this morning, the ridge top temperatures have thankfully warmed 20 degrees from yesterday morning and they have rehabilitated themselves to a balmy 15-20 degrees and winds are relatively light.  Although the winds have scoured the higher wind-exposed peaks, the cold temperatures have preserved the great powder at mid and lower elevations.  There’s a bit of a pesky sun crust on the steeper south facing slopes.

 

Avalanche Conditions:

The only avalanche activity yesterday was sluffing of the light, dry powder on steep slopes.  Some of these sluffs were large enough to bury a person or take them over a cliff, so be sure to practice all your sluff management techniques like moving across the fall line or letting the sluffs run out ahead of you.  Although we continue to experience widespread collapsing of the snow at lower elevations and in thin snowpack areas, we just haven’t had any weight added to these buried weak layers for a week or so, and they don’t seem inclined to avalanche.  More importantly, today, as temperatures warm dramatically at upper elevations and the inversions mix out at lower elevations, some of our dry, cold powder on the surface could quickly turn damp or wet and you may see some sluffing of wet snow especially on steep sun exposed slopes and on steep lower elevation slopes.  For instance, three days ago when it was warmer, one woman was caught in one of these wet sluffs on a southeast facing slope in Butler Fork and taken for a short ride.

 

Bottom Line for the Wasatch Range, including the Salt Lake, Park City, provo and OGden AREA MOUNTAINS:

The avalanche danger will be generally low today with localized areas of moderate danger of loose, dry sluffs on steep slopes and damp to wet, loose sluffs on steep sun exposed slopes and lower elevation slopes when the cold, dry snow gets wet for the first time.

 

Uinta Mountains:  For Uinta specific information, click on Western Uintas on the advisory page or phone 1-800-648-7433.

Logan: click HERE or call 435-797-4146

 

Mountain Weather:

Today should be clear and sunny with dramatically warmer temperatures.  On the ridge tops, the temperatures should climb up to the upper 20’s later in the day.  Ridge top winds will remain light from the northeast, switching to northwest later in the day.  Down at 8,000’ the day time highs should climb into the mid to upper 30’s.  On Saturday, we will have increasing clouds with a weak system bringing light snow for Saturday night and cooling ridge top temperatures down again to the mid teens.  The extended forecast calls for cloudy and light snow again on Sunday, then a stronger system for Tuesday night to about Thursday.

 

For specific digital forecasts for the Salt Lake, Provo or Ogden mountains, CLICK HERE.

 

General Information:

Yesterday, the Wasatch Powderbird Guides flew in the Day’s, Mineral and White Pine drainages and today they will be in Mineral, Cardiff, Days, Silver, Grizzly, American Fork and Mill Creek.

 

Some gear was lost Sunday morning on the Alta to Flagstaff up track.  If you found it, please call 801-554-5139.

 

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. 

 

Drew Hardesty will update this advisory Saturday morning.

Thanks for calling.

 

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