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The
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Center Home page is: http://www.utahavalanchecenter.com
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Avalanche advisory
Thursday, February 10, 2005
Good morning, this is
Brett Kobernik will
be giving a free avalanche awareness talk at the SLC Milosport
this Friday, February 11th, at 7pm.
There will even be some free swag awarded at the end for answering
random avalanche questions.
Current Conditions:
Everybody is raving about the great powder snow. We haven’t seen much of it this winter so I
hope you enjoyed it while you could because this morning, ridge top
temperatures are already in the mid 20’s, which is about 20 degrees warmer this
morning than yesterday morning. Also
increasing clouds this afternoon will likely finish off the nice snow.
Avalanche Conditions:
Usually, most avalanches occur during
or right after a storm and the hazard decreases as time goes on. But just the opposite seems to be happening. The new snow that fell on Sunday night and
Monday was very light density and not only didn’t weigh enough to overload the
buried weak layers of faceted snow and surface hoar, but the feather-like snow
didn’t form a slab. But time and warmer
temperatures are stiffening up the new snow and we’re seeing more and more
soft-slab avalanches. Yesterday, skiers
triggered three different soft slab avalanches in American Fork on
Also, for the past couple days, people were able to sluff the snow easily on
steep slopes, which generally don’t catch people, but some of these sluffs have
been quite substantial. For instance,
yesterday, in
Finally, warmer temperatures and greenhousing from
high clouds will continue to produce wet sluffs when the new snow gets soggy.
Bottom Line (
The avalanche danger is still generally LOW today with a MODERATE danger on
any steep slope where the new snow is more slab-like, especially wind drifted
slopes. Also, with day time heating, the
danger of wet loose avalanches will rise to MODERATE
on and below steep slopes that become wet from sun or warmer temperatures. Finally, avalanche danger may rise
dramatically by the weekend with the addition of dense new snow and wind.
Mountain Weather:
The party is nearly over. A wet, warm
low pressure system is moving up from Baja and today we should have warmer
temperatures, increasing clouds and increasing ridge top winds from the
south. By Friday, we should see light
snow showers and heavier snow showers on Saturday. Today, on the ridge tops, temperatures will
be in the mid to upper 20’s with 10-20 mph winds from the south with thicker
clouds moving in by afternoon. Down at
8,000’ day time highs will be in the lower 40’s.
Yesterday, Wasatch Powderbird
guides flew in American Fork,
We really appreciate any
information you are willing to give us.
You don’t have to be an avalanche expert to give us some observations so
please call and leave a message on our answering machine at 524-5304 or
1-800-662-4140, or e-mail us at [email protected].
Our partner The
Friends of the
The Friends of the
Bruce Tremper
will give a talk called the Science of Avalanches at REI on Tuesday, February
15th at 7:00 pm.
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.
Brett Kobernik will update this
advisory by 7:30 on Friday morning.
Thanks for calling
For an explanation of avalanche danger ratings:
http://www.avalanche.org/~uac/ed-scale.htm