In
partnership with: The Friends of the
Utah Avalanche Forecast Center, Utah Department of Public Safety Division of
Comprehensive Emergency Management, Salt Lake County, and Utah State Parks
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e-mails of this advisory click HERE.
Saturday, January 22, 2005
Good morning, this is
Current Conditions:
When I was growing up, I
used to love foggy days because fog always means that it’s sunny and warm up in
the mountains and that’s exactly what you will find again today. There will be
some nice, supportable corn snow again on south facing slopes as it warms up in
the sun by mid morning. There’s still
some dry, recrystallized Styrofoam on upper elevation north facing slopes with
variable sun crusts on east and west facing slopes. No, it’s not the Greatest Snow on Earth, but
it’s certainly better than the dreary smog down in the valleys. This morning, there’s a strong temperature
inversion again with temperatures in the low 20’s in the mountain valley
bottoms and around 30 along the ridge tops and it will quickly warm to the 50’s
at 8,000’ and the low 40’s along the ridge tops.
Avalanche Conditions:
Everyone I run into keeps
asking the same question: “Do you think the big, deep avalanches have
stabilized out?” Well, for the most
part, they probably have. But yes, you
may still be able to trigger one of these monster slides that will be deeper
than you are tall, but you would have to fall or get your snowmobile stuck in
just the wrong spot. If you are unlucky
enough to find one of these unsurvivable avalanches, it would most likely be on
upper elevation, steep, large slopes that face the north and east quadrants of
the compass. (Another Photo of the explosive triggered avalanche on Red Baldy
from Wednesday) The second problem today
will be wet sluffs, especially at lower elevation, sun exposed slopes in the
heat of the afternoon (PHOTO).
Bottom Line (
The avalanche
danger of large, hard-slab avalanches is MODERATE on steep,
upper elevation slopes that face the north through east quadrants of the
compass and also a MODERATE danger of
wet sluffs on steep sun exposed slopes in the heat of the afternoon especially
at lower elevations.
Mountain Weather:
Another sunny, hot, sweaty
day in the mountains today with the daytime high at 8,000’ near 50 and
overnight lows in the mid to upper 20’s.
Ridge top temperatures will be around 40 degrees with light and variable
winds. It looks like about the same on
Sunday.
For the extended forecast,
we have a hint of some clouds on Monday, but most likely we will have to wait
until mid week for our next chance for snow, with another storm for next
weekend.
Yesterday Powderbird
Guides flew Days, Porter, Alexander and the
There will be a free,
short video and a panel discussion entitled “Avalanche – Weather Mountains and
Risk. It will be at the Salt Lake
Library at 7:00 pm on Wednesday, January 26th.
Snowbird is
hosting its 2nd annual Backcountry Avalanche Awareness Week January
31 – February 7th as a benefit for the
The new UAC web page is up
and operational. Check it out at
www.avalanche.org then click on
If you see anything we
aught to know about, remember we can’t be everywhere at once, so we depend on
people just like you. Leave a message at
524-5304, or 1-800-662-4140, or e-mail us at [email protected]
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 by 7:30 on
Sunday morning.
Thanks for calling
For an explanation of
avalanche danger ratings: