In
partnership with: The Friends of the Utah Avalanche Center, Utah Department of
Public Safety Division of Comprehensive Emergency Management,
For photos of avalanches and
avalanche activity, 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)
Avalanche INFORMATION - afternoon update
Saturday, April 24, 2004 6:00 pm
Good afternoon, this is
Current
Conditions:
When I was out today in
Little Cottonwood Canyon and American Fork, there was actually some nice
supportable snow this morning on the southerly facing slopes that could be
mistaken for corn snow and there was still a few scraps of snow that could pass
for soft, settled powder on steep north facing slopes above about 10,000’. On all the other slopes, the snow surface was
breakable crust. Luckily, the
temperature today was quite a bit colder than yesterday and along with stronger
winds the snow didn’t get wet until later in the day. The ridge top temperatures were around
freezing today, while they were around 40 yesterday and the 8,000 foot
temperature was around 40 today and it was near 50 yesterday.
Avalanche Conditions:
Because of the cooler
temperatures, scattered clouds and wind, the wet activity kept to a minimum
today. I was able to make some nice rollerballs on some of the steep, north facing slopes
around 9,500’ in the heat of the afternoon and I did notice a couple fresh wet
sluffs on the steep, south facing slopes, but otherwise things seemed pretty
quiet. (Click HERE
for photos.) As this new, cold snow
warms up for the first time, it tends to misbehave because the percolating melt
water just gets soaked up in the fine grained snow like a sponge. Within a couple days of strong melting, it becomes
more porous and develops drainage channels and thus becomes much more stable. So watch out for the new snow when it gets wet
these next couple days. I’m also
guessing that this warm up will occur slowly enough that we won’t see any big
activity, but rather smaller wet sluffs on most all aspects as temperatures
continue to warm over the next several days.
So it’s back to the old spring time game of setting your alarm clock
early. Start on the east facing slopes
in early morning, south in mid morning and west in the late morning and get off
of the snow when it starts to becomes unsupportable. You should head home around noon. Also, remember that the snow surface is hard
and icy in the morning, so you can easily slide on the slick surface so watch
your step.
We feel uncomfortable issuing
any avalanche danger ratings for several reasons: first there’s so little
information coming in this time of year, second, several of our staff are off
for the season and finally, we’re only issuing afternoon updates, so the
information is 16 hours old by the time you get out on the snow. So we’ll just tell you what we know and leave
the bottom line to you.
Lastly, remember that except
for Snowbird, all of the ski areas are closed – therefore, you’ll need to treat
your favorite resort runs as the backcountry.
Mountain Weather:
As a nice high pressure ridge builds into
We’ll update this advisory again either on Sunday afternoon or on Monday.
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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