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 3/25)

Photos sent in by observers throughout the season visit: http://www.avalanche.org/~uac/obphotos/observer.html (Updated 4/2)

For a list of backcountry avalanche activity, visit: http://www.avalanche.org/%7Euac/Avalanche_List.htm (Updated 3/31)

Early morning preliminary information by about 6:00 am: 801-364-1591

Avalanche advisory

Saturday, April 10, 2004, 7:30 am

Good morning, this is Drew Hardesty with the Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center with your backcountry avalanche and mountain weather advisory. Today is Saturday, April 10, 2004, and it’s 7:30 a.m. This forecast is brought to you in partnership with the Friends of the Utah Avalanche Center, supported in part by the Uinta Brewing Company.

Current Conditions:

Old Man Winter is back, if only for a couple days. Yesterday’s storm draped the central Wasatch with a couple inches of snow with the Logan and Uinta Mountains picking up 4-8”. The temperatures too reflect the passing of the cold front as mountain temps are in the teens and twenties. 11k temps are even trying to nudge down into the single digits. Areas north of I-80 are also picking up the lion’s share of the winds, as ridgetop winds there have been averaging in the 40’s and 50’s, gusting into the 70’s. The winds in the central core are about half of that. It’ll be dust on crust today and I’d expect a supportable platform throughout the range.

Avalanche Conditions:

The cooler temps for the last couple days have put the lid on the wet activity and today’s problems will be isolated to those shallow drifts of blown snow. It’ll be possible to encounter scoured areas alternating with 6-8” pockets of deeper snow and they may be sensitive to a ski cut. The danger may be more pronounced in the northern Ogden, Logan and Uinta Mountains.

Bottom Line for the Salt Lake, Park CITY, OGDEN AND Provo AREA MOUNTAINS:

The danger is generally LOW with pockets of MODERATE on steep slopes with recent deposits of wind drifted snow.

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:

Unsettled weather should persist into today with intermittent snow showers. The strong easterly winds should start to die down by late morning and blow in the 10-15mph range.

8000’ temps will be in the upper 20’s with 10,000’ temps hovering around 20 degrees. It should start to clear out by tonight as high pressure returns along with warming temps through mid week. The longer range models suggest a storm by midweek followed by another next weekend.

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

General Information:

We will continue to issue morning forecasts through tomorrow, and then we’ll go to intermittent afternoon updates.

The Wasatch Powderbird Guides were grounded yesterday, and if they can make it out today, they will be in White Pine, Mineral Fork, Cardiff Fork, Days Fork and Silver Fork.

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.

I will update this advisory on Sunday morning.

Thanks for calling.

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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