In partnership with: Utah Division of State
Parks and Recreation, The Friends of the Utah Avalanche Center, Utah Department
of Emergency Services and Homeland Security and
AVALANCHE ADVISORY
Friday,
January 06, 2006 7:30am
Good morning, this is Evelyn Lees with
the
Little Cottonwood Canyon will be closed from approximately 11
am to noon today to sight in artillery from the Tanners slide path up canyon through
Little Pine. Please do not travel in
these south facing slide paths today.
Check out our new graphical advisory format. You can update your bookmarks to this link:
http://www.avalanche.org/~uac/newadvisory/advisory.php
Current Conditions:
It’s going to be a sizzler today, with a few upper elevation mountain
stations already hitting 40 degrees at 6 am.
The coolest temperatures are in the valley bottoms within the
temperature inversion. Winds are from a
southwesterly direction, in the 10 to 15 mph range.
Under clear skies, the sunny slopes will have nasty, breakable crusts early
before turning to slop later this morning.
Good settled powder remains on shady, wind sheltered slopes.
Avalanche Conditions:
Explosive
work yesterday pulled out 3 more deep slides in the backcountry and at
resorts. They were all on northeasterly
facing slopes, above about 9,500’. Two
slides ran to the ground, one about 100’ wide and the other, Cardiac
ridge, about
500’ wide and 7 to 10’ deep. The third
slide was in American Fork, and ran on a lower pack weakness, and was about 200’
wide. Once again, there are only isolated
places where the weight of a person could trigger one of these deeper slides,
but if you do, it would be basically unsurvivable. So choose your lines carefully today, and
avoid shallower, rocky areas, or heavily wind drifted slopes. Many moderate and bold lines were skied without
incident yesterday.
A shallower, new snow slide was also triggered yesterday in very steep
terrain off Tuscarora, 1 to 2’ deep, again on an east facing, high elevation
slope. There is the potential for the
weight of a smaller new snow slide to trigger a deeper slide.
Day time heating will again initiate a round of wet loose sluffs on
steep sunny slopes. As high thin clouds
drift through, the snow may also heat up on northerly facing slopes, and sluffs
will also be possible on the shady aspects.
Cornices are getting sensitive with the heating.
Bottom Line:
The avalanche danger is MODERATE today on slopes
steeper than 35 degrees, above about 9,500’, facing northwest through north
through east. There are isolated places
where a person could trigger a deep, dangerous slide. With daytime heating, the avalanche danger of
wet loose sluffs will rise to MODERATE on steep
slopes when the snow heats up. The
danger is generally LOW below about 9,500’
(8,500’ in the Ogden area mountains) and on slopes less steep than 35 degrees.
Mountain Weather:
High pressure directly over
Click HERE for
other weather links
Preliminary accident report from the weekend avalanche accident on
Timpanogos can be found here.
Regional
Snow Profile (this profile can also be
found daily off our home page under avalanche products)
Click here for Seasonal Weather History Charts.
Yesterday,
Wasatch Powderbird Guides flew in
Please
report any backcountry snow and avalanche conditions you observe. Call (801) 524-5304 or 1-800-662-4140, email [email protected] or fax 801-524-6301. 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.
To
have this advisory automatically e-mailed to you each day, click HERE. (You must re-sign up this season even if you
were on the list last season.)
UDOT also has a highway avalanche control work
hotline for Little Cottonwood road, which is updated as needed. 801-975-4838.
Brett Kobernik will update this advisory by 7:30 Saturday morning. Thanks for calling.