In
partnership with: The Friends of the Utah Avalanche Center, Utah Department of
Public Safety Division of Comprehensive Emergency Management,
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
2/27)
Photos sent in by observers
throughout the season visit: http://www.avalanche.org/~uac/obphotos/observer.html (Updated
2/24)
For a list of backcountry avalanche activity, visit: http://www.avalanche.org/%7Euac/Avalanche_List.htm (Updated 2/27)
Avalanche advisory
Saturday, February 28, 2004, 7:30 am
Good
morning, this is
Current Conditions:
The tune “It’s Beginning
to Look Like Christmas” keeps running through my head because that’s exactly the
last time we had this much snow added over such a short time. Plus, there’s the nagging reminder that we’ve
also had avalanche fatalities during both storms. Thursday’s big storm laid
down 1-2 feet of dense snow with 2 inches of water weight (3 inches on
Avalanche Conditions:
For the avalanche danger, imagine two humps on a
camel’s back. We reached the top of the
first hump on Thursday afternoon and evening with an intense snow and wind
storm. Yesterday, we slid down between
the two humps as the wind slabs had a chance to settle out a bit. Today we’re rising up the side of the second
hump and we should reach the top of the hump tonight and on Sunday after we
have added another 1-2 feet of snow and another 1-2 inches of water weight. As I’m so fond of saying, snow is just like
people, it doesn’t like rapid changes and we are walloping the snowpack with a
large and rapid change over a 4-day period, which is bound to make it cranky. We also have two different kinds of snowpack
in the northern
Bottom
Line for the Wasatch Range, including the
The avalanche danger is CONSIDERABLE this morning, especially on steep slopes with deposits of wind drifted snow from Thursday’s storm and in thin snowpack areas. The danger may rise to HIGH by Sunday morning as more snow accumulates. Considerable means human triggered slides are probable and natural avalanches possible, and high means that both natural and human triggered avalanches are likely. You can find plenty of areas with LOW avalanche danger today on slopes less steep than 30 degrees, which don’t have steeper slopes hanging above them.
Mountain Weather:
As
the low pressure center moves into
For specific digital forecasts for the
General Information:
The Wasatch Powderbird Guides will probably not be flying today because of weather but they may be doing avalanche control for the highways and ski resorts.
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 Sunday morning.
Thanks for calling.
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