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Avalanche advisory
Monday, February 21,
2005
Good morning, this is
Current Conditions:
Wow. Yesterday was a wild day with much
heavier snow and stronger wind than forecast.
8-15 inches of dense snow fell yesterday with around an inch of water
weight in many areas. In places favored
by southwest flow, such as the
Avalanche Conditions:
Not surprisingly, the heavy, dense
snow and strong wind created very widespread areas of sensitive soft slab
avalanches especially in wind drifted terrain.
This morning I have a long list of both natural and human triggered avalanches
in the backcountry yesterday. Thanks to
everyone for e-mailing or calling in observations. I have more details at
364-1591, which we update each morning by 5:00 am with avalanche activity. You can also check out our avalanche list on
the web. (PHOTO
of a skier triggered wind slab on
I will mention a couple
notable slides here: A natural avalanche
off the east face of
In theory, the slabs within yesterday’s new snow should settle out fairly
quickly and they will be much harder to trigger today because the new snow was
so wet and dense, and it was clear overnight.
What I’m more worried about is all the water weight added over the past
several days continues to overload the weak layers of faceted snow, now buried
about four feet deep. I would not be
surprised if some eager beaver triggered a deeper, more dangerous avalanche
today. These deeper avalanches will be more difficult to trigger but they will
be very large and hard to survive. So
today, like yesterday, is a good day to avoid slopes steeper than about 35
degrees, especially slopes with recent deposits of wind drifted snow and slopes
that face north through east. Since the
new snow is dense and supportable, you can have plenty of fun on gentler slopes
today. Finally, you need to watch out
for wet sluffs and slabs on steep sun exposed slopes when the sun makes the
snow surface wet and soggy.
Bottom Line (Salt Lake,
Park City, Provo, and Ogden mountains):
The
avalanche danger remains CONSIDERABLE on any slope steeper than about
35 degrees especially on upper elevation slopes with
recent wind deposits facing north through east.
Also, there is a CONSIDERABLE danger of damp to wet sluffs and
slabs on steep slopes heated by the sun today. (http://www.avalanche.org/~uac/ed-scale.htm
for an explanation of avalanche danger ratings.)
Mountain Weather: (You
can find the afternoon Weather Update here.)
Today should be a
good day to get out and see all the recent avalanches. We will finally have a break in the weather
with just a few clouds hanging around the mountain tops this morning dissipating
later in the day with increasing high clouds and an increasing chance of light
snow by tonight. Ridge top winds will
calm down from 15 mph to 5 mph from the southwest with ridge top temperatures
around 20 degrees. Down at 8,000’ the
day time high should be near 30 with the overnight low around 20. Tuesday, we should have light snow showers
that probably won’t add up to more than a couple inches with light ridgetop
winds from the southeast to southwest.
Then, it looks fairly benign for the rest of the week as a low pressure
center passes to the south of
Yesterday,
the Wasatch Powderbird Guides did not fly and today they will be I American
Fork and
Thanks again to everyone who is sending in observations! This advisory
is for you and it’s great to hear from people who use it. Please keep calling us at 524-5304 or
1-800-662-4140, or e-mailing us at [email protected]. Fax is 524-6301.
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 Tuesday morning.
Thanks for calling.
For an explanation of avalanche danger ratings:
http://www.avalanche.org/~uac/ed-scale.htm