Wasatch Cache National Forest
In partnership with: Utah State Parks and Recreation, The Friends of the Utah Avalanche Center, Utah Department of Emergency Services and Homeland Security and Salt Lake County.

 

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Avalanche Information

Monday, April 25, 2005  6:30 pm
Good evening, this is Bruce Tremper with the Forest Service Utah Avalanche Center with your backcountry avalanche and mountain weather advisory.  Today is Monday, April 25, 2005, and its 6:30 pm.  We’ll issue intermittent afternoon updates as conditions change until around the end of April.  

Current Conditions: 
The 6 inches or so of snow that fell on Sunday has now turned to damp powder at the extreme high elevations and wet glop below about 10,000’.  Today, there were a few light snow showers with the rain-snow line around 8,000’.   Today, the temperature rose to around 50 degrees at 8,000’ and up to around 35 on the ridges with a light wind.

Mountain Weather:
It’s that kind of gunky spring weather that gives us only light snow showers up high and not much of it and gives us periods of sun at times, but not much of that either.  Mostly just skuzzy clouds and warm—not much good for anything really.  We should have clouds for the rest of the week, including the weekend.  Tomorrow, we will have a weak ridge build over us but it will remain cloudy with some sun poking through at times.  The low tonight will barely get below freezing at 8,000’ and the high on Tuesday will be up around 50 degrees once again.  Tuesday we may get some light snow showers with the rain-snow line around 8,000’ or so.  Then, we have a stronger pulse of Pacific moisture pushing into Utah on Wednesday through the weekend, which will cool things down by Thursday and will once again give us a shot of snow.

Avalanche Information:
There wasn’t much avalanche activity today except for some sluffing of the new, damp snow and widespread areas of rollerballs in the new snow.  At elevations below about 8,500’, the snow is especially wet and some of the sluffs in the new snow were gouging down to dirt in places, making some dirty debris piles.  For instance, the Y-couloir ran naturally, as it does like clockwork after every snow storm in the spring when the new snow warms up.  If the sun comes out on Tuesday, you can expect some more widespread sluffing of the damp to wet snow on the surface with occasional gouging down to deeper layers at lower elevations.

If you run across anything we should know about, please call and leave a message at 524-5304 or 1-800-662-4140, or e-mail 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.

We’ll update this forecast as conditions warrant, and thanks for calling.