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Avalanche Information
Wednesday, April 27,
2005 5:30 pm
Good afternoon, this is
Current Conditions:
There was a nice refreeze last night with clear skies this morning making for
some fine, immature corn. But it’s all
over now because the next storm is starting to kick in. Moist, unstable air has arrived in
Mountain Weather:
This afternoon we return to winter again, or at least cool, wet, springtime
weather that looks like it will last for at least the next 10 days or so. The total snowpack depth and the water
equivalent in the mountains is the largest it has been since the famous spring
of 1983. That’s the spring where it
continued to snow through the first two thirds of May and when it finally
warmed up, people were kayaking down
In the mean time, we will get thunderstorms this afternoon and Thursday with
ridge top winds blowing 25-30 from the southwest and ridge top temperatures
near freezing. Then, a cold front should arrive on Thursday. We will probably get a foot of snow at higher
elevations by Friday afternoon.
Thursday’s cold front will cause the ridge top temperatures to drop to
the mid teens by Friday morning with ridge top winds turning to the
northwest. Then, it looks like continued
cloudy and cool with occasional snow showers through the weekend. We may get a break in the action about
Wednesday but it should be snowing again the following weekend.
Avalanche
Information:
During the warm weather these past couple days, there
was the usual number of wet sluffs and occasional wet
slabs, but they all seemed to come down without involving any people. As you know, spring is the flip-flopping
season. You deal with new snow when it’s
storming and you instantly deal with wet snow when it gets sunny and warm after
the storm. We are now entering the new
snow phase again. As usual, as the new
snow piles up, you need to first, carefully check how well the new snow is
bonded to the underlying melt-freeze crust, second, check to see if there is
any weak layers within the new snow, and finally, check to see if the wind has
created wind slabs in the new snow.
Luckily, you can do all of these things easily by jumping on test
slopes, doing slope cuts and simply digging down with your hand. I suspect that most of these problems will be
easy to deal with, but if the snow piles up more than a foot deep, especially
in wind drifted, steep slopes, things could get more serious.
Since we are operating on a reduced staff and there’s not much information
coming in this time of year, we won’t issue any avalanche danger ratings.
Finally, remember that with the exception of Snowbird, all the ski resorts are
closed for the season and they are not doing any avalanche control. So you need to treat them like the
backcountry and follow the usual safe-travel ritual, like one-at-a-time, don’t
travel above other people and get out of the way at the bottom.
We will probably end our avalanche advisories for the season after this
weekend.
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.