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
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 afternoon update
Sunday, April 18, 2004 5:30pm
Good afternoon, this is Drew
Hardesty with the
Current Conditions:
Well, it’s about time. It felt good to break trail again and at
least pretend that we were back in winter.
Storm totals across range as of 5pm are 2-3” in the Logan mtns, 6-7” in the Ogden, Park City, and Uinta mountains, 3-6” in the Provo
mountains, and 12-17” in Big and Little Cottonwood. Densities averaged 8-10%, providing a good
base above the old crusts. Winds in the
Avalanche Conditions:
Today’s avalanches were a
mixed bag of cold dry sluffs, sun activated wet point releases, and some
localized 8-10” soft slabs, some up to 150’ wide in upper Little
Cottonwood. The avalanches were
primarily running within the new snow, and then entraining all the snow down to
the crust once it had gained enough momentum.
The dry and wet-activated sluffs were big enough to pack a punch with
some producing decent debris piles down in the flats below. Unless you were careless, these were easy to
trigger on a ski cut and easy to avoid on a diagonal fall line. Regarding the soft slabs, my hunch is that
the highest sensitivity peaked in the mid-morning, corresponding to the high
precipitation rates, but suspect that the moderate temps have settled most of
them out by now. Clearly, the lack of
wind kept the activity to a minimum. The
other concern for Monday will be losing an edge on the slick crust or by being
knocked over by a sluff and then rag-dolling down the slope, over cliffs,
through trees, and into the creek.
BOTTOM LINE FOR THE
Mountain Weather: We’ll
get a bit of a break Sunday night with another disturbance expected to move
into northern
Backcountry
snow and avalanche information is still useful to us. So if you’re still getting out and see
anything of interest, leave us a message at 524-5304, 1 800-662-4140, drop us
an email at [email protected], or a fax
to 524-6301. The information in this
advisory is from the US Forest Service, which is solely responsible for its
content. This advisory describes general
avalanche conditions and local variations always occur.
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