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Friday, January 28, 2005
Good morning, this is
Brett Kobernik with the
This Friday,
January 28th, I will be giving a free avalanche talk at Milosport in
Current Conditions:
The mountains
unfortunately didn’t pick up any measurable snow overnight. Temperatures are just a few degrees colder
then yesterday at 4 am with 8000’ readings in the upper 20’s and 10,000’
readings in the low 20’s. Winds are
light from the west.
Avalanche Conditions:
With the mountains picking
up 4 to 6 inches from yesterday and around a half inch of water, I heard people
describe the riding conditions as “improving”, “almost good”, and “fun on low
angle slopes”. Hey, it’s better then
nothing. The deeper snow was most
pronounced at higher elevations. It
rapidly settled to only a few inches especially at lower elevations. It bonded fairly well to the old snow surface
in most locations. The new snow sluffed a bit but these sluffs were not enough to get
worried about. Warm temperatures made
the snow wet and produced rollerballs at the lower
elevations as well. A few folks
including myself found some wind drifts up to 8” deep along the ridges but
these were not very sensitive and produced no hazard.
Bottom Line (
The small
amount of snow from yesterday did not change the avalanche conditions
much. Most slopes have a LOW avalanche danger.
You may still find small amounts of sluffing today especially with any
new snow. The hazard may rise to MODERATE if we pick up more snow then expected during the day.
Mountain Weather:
A splitting storm will
affect the area today and into Saturday.
We’ll see mostly cloudy
skies with snow showers likely during the day.
Accumulation of 1 to 3 inches expected.
8000’ temperatures will be near 30 degrees and 10,000’ temperatures in
the low 20’s. Ridgetop wind speeds from
the west will be in the 10 mph range.
For tonight and Saturday
we’ll see cloudy skies and a few more inches of snow should fall. Another 1 to 3 inches expected. This may change our “almost good” conditions
to decent. Ridgetop winds will shift to
the southwest and remain in the 10 mph range.
A ridge of high pressure
builds in after the weekend.
Yesterday Powderbird
Guides were not able to fly. They
probably won’t have the visibility to fly today either, but if they get out,
they will be in
Snowbird is
hosting its 2nd annual Backcountry Avalanche Awareness Week January
31 – February 7th as a benefit for the
If you see anything we ought
to know about please call and leave a message at 524-5304, or 1-800-662-4140,
or e-mail us at [email protected],
remember we can’t be everywhere at once, so we depend on people just like
you.
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.
Evelyn Lees will update this advisory by 7:30 on Saturday
morning.
Thanks for calling
For an explanation of
avalanche danger ratings:
http://www.avalanche.org/~uac/ed-scale.htm